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Greetings, everyone, I am copying here a fairly long article. I do believe it is
worth a careful read. It describes a health insurance approach being
adopted by a unique group, Christian evangelicals. The characteristics that make
them unique are the characteristics that make the approach work. I think we are
going to see a lot more of this; it may be a harbinger of a gradually
disintegrating society. In a sense, it is similar to gated communities;
some, well-off, simply say they are tired of carrying those less so, or those
who represent a special burden. Lawry From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Karen Watters Cole This is certainly good news, hopeful that the
‘Godzilla of retail’ may be learning to be a good neighbor.
It’s also a smart move with rising energy costs and marketing to new
‘green’ customers. We will be watching. kwc Wal-Mart to Seek Savings in Energy
By MICHAEL BARBARO and FELICITY BARRINGER, Oct. 24, 2005 BENTONVILLE,
Ark. - Wal-Mart's chief executive is set to announce on Tuesday a set of
sweeping, specific environmental goals to reduce energy use in its stores, double its trucks' fuel
efficiency, minimize its use of packaging and pressure thousands of companies
in its worldwide supply chain to follow its lead. Embracing
energy-conscious and environmentally conscious goals will help both the company's bottom line and its customers' needs, H. Lee Scott said in an interview Monday. Mr.
Scott's announcement signals that the
nation's largest retailer is joining the nation's largest manufacturer, General
Electric, in pursuing policies
that set specific goals for environmental
performance, while advertising
those goals to shareholders and customers and the public as strategic business
decisions. G.E.
faced criticism for its own environmental practices; Wal-Mart has faced
criticism as well, but largely over its low wages, scant health insurance
coverage and what its critics have called poor treatment of workers. Those
critics responded to Wal-Mart's environmental initiative by saying that, while
admirable, it is intended to divert attention from the chain's image problems. Mr.
Scott told Wal-Mart's top officers here this morning, in an address broadcast
to employees by video conference, that, "As one of the largest companies
in the world, with an expanding global presence, environmental problems are our
problems." His
goals, he said, are to invest $500 million in technologies that will reduce
greenhouse gases from stores and distribution centers by 20 percent over the
next seven years; increase the fuel efficiency of the truck fleet by 25 percent
over the next three years and double it within 10 years, and design a new store
within four years that is at least 25 percent more energy-efficient. News of
the upcoming announcement drew carefully parsed praise from leaders of
environmental groups, including some, like Environmental Defense, which have a
history of joint initiatives with large businesses, and others, like the Sierra
Club, which have traditionally been more confrontational. In
general, they applauded Wal-Mart's initiatives and commitments, but sought
assurances that there would be a continuing public accounting - using a
concrete baseline - of factors like energy use, fuel-efficiency and reduction
in solid waste. "I
thought G.E. was big," said Alyson Slater, a spokeswoman for the Global
Reporting Initiative, a group based in Amsterdam that provides guidance to
companies seeking to analyze and publicly report their environmental practices.
"But Wal-Mart? Whoa. That's big." "There
are a lot of people out there who are going to be skeptical," she added.
"But if they can prove it, if they can say: Here's our targets. Here's how
we're meeting them," then the company could win over many skeptics, she
said. Wal-Mart's
community activist and organized labor critics said the environmental goals
failed to address what they said were the company's most pressing
problems. "It is a diversionary
tactic," said Chris Kofinis, of Wake Up Wal-Mart, a group
founded by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which is trying to
organize the chain's workers. "Wal-Mart
understands that they have a growing public relations disaster on their hands. American people are looking at a company with $10 billion in
profit and $285 billion in sales that makes excuse after excuse about why it
can't provide a living wage and health care to its workers." In his
speech, Mr. Scott outlined a new health insurance plan with lower premiums but
relatively high out-of-pocket deductible requirements that he said would make
benefits more affordable to the company's 1.3 million United States workers.
But Ron Pollack, executive director of Families U.S.A., a health care consumer
advocacy group, criticized the plan, saying employees who signed up for it
would be deterred from seeking medical care because of the out-of-pocket costs,
which might exceed $2,500 a year. Mr.
Scott struck a defiant note on Wal-Mart's wages, which average less than $10 an
hour, or less than $19,000 a year. "Even slight overall adjustments to
wages eliminate our thin profit margin," he said. In an unusual
move, Mr. Scott
asked Congress to consider raising the minimum wage. "We can see first
hand at Wal-Mart how many of our customers are struggling to get by," he
said. The
company's environmental initiative includes improving energy efficiency at its 1,876 supercenters, which now consume an average of 1.5 million kilowatts of
electricity annually, according to Tara Stewart, a spokeswoman for the company.
A model center in McKinney, Tex., has in its first few months shown an
improvement of slightly less than 10 percent, she said. Mr.
Scott said that as the largest buyer of manufactured goods in the world,
Wal-Mart has the power to encourage its more than 60,000 suppliers to adopt
environmentally conscious business practices. "Our most direct impact
will be on our suppliers," he said. "If we request that our suppliers use packaging that has less waste or materials that can
be recycled, everybody who buys
from that manufacturer will end up using that package." As an
example of how the company can encourage better packaging, Mr. Scott said he
would ensure prime placement, at the end of store aisles, for a 32-ounce bottle
of All laundry detergent that has been concentrated to reduce the container's
size. The goal, the company said, is for all laundry detergent suppliers to
offer similar packaging by the end of the year. Asked
why Wal-Mart, whose critics have railed against its wages and health insurance
plan, chose to focus on the environment, Mr. Scott said: "There is work
going on in all of those areas. But there is not the ability to change as much
in many of those areas as we can change in this area of environmental
sustainability." The company is also
keenly aware that environmental issues are a high priority to the higher-income shopper that Wal-Mart is courting with a new line of urban fashions,
400-thread-count sheets and a line of baby clothes made with organic cotton.
"That customer was not the inspiration" for the proposals, Mr. Scott
said, but added: "I think an outcome of what we are doing with
sustainability" is "that customer will have a better feeling about
Wal-Mart and more positive reaction to Wal-Mart." The
commitments to environmental sustainability come after what the company
described as an intense, yearlong listening tour that took Mr. Scott and his
top managers to a maple syrup farm in New Hampshire, where they studied the
impact of rising world temperatures, and the cotton farms of Turkey, where they
examined the role of toxins in clothing manufacturing. Mr.
Scott said in the interview that company executives next week would talk to Chinese
government officials to learn about, and try to influence, that country's
embryonic program to encourage environmentally sound manufacturing practices. An
Feng, the director of the Auto Project on Energy and Climate Change, based in
Beijing, said in a telephone interview that the government was calling for
business and nonprofit partners to help shape its efforts. "It's a big
challenge" to come up with such a system, he said. The trucks in Wal-Mart's fleet, the nation's largest, have a
fuel efficiency of about 6.5 miles per gallon. "They can do at least 13," said Amory Lovins, chief
executive of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit organization that serves
as a consultant to companies on energy efficiency and has performed work for
Wal-Mart. "They are a big enough buyer
to get truck suppliers' undivided attention." Mr.
Lovins added: "The reason Wal-Mart's leadership in this area is so
important is that they have the scale and market power to change what is
offered, and to change it rapidly." Carl
Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club and a board member of Wal-Mart
Watch, a group critical of Wal-Mart, said that, from an environmental
standpoint, Wal-Mart's stated goals would bring tangible improvements.
But, he said, they had
not addressed the land-use impact of locating new stores in rural areas, covering fields or wetlands
and prompting customers to consume extra gasoline to reach them. Even so, "these are
positive steps," Mr. Pope said. "If they do these things, it's not greenscamming.
If they did what they say they will, it would be major shift." Michael
Barbaro reported from Bentonville, Ark., for this article, and Felicity
Barringer from Washington. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/25/business/25walmart.html |
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