Indeed, someone explained to me years ago that one of Home Depot's
business strategies is to go into an urban area and open up several
stores at strategic locations and then leverage their massive buying
power and financial reserves to undercut the market. They only have to
do this for a while until they destroy the local small businesses which
works because they offer so much and they keep prices low and then when
the competition is gone they close up several of the locations forcing
people to drive further. On the other hand I wonder where the tradeoff
point really is when you consider the fuel you burn driving around to
several mom and pop outfits in a day to get all the stuff you could get
in one stop at the super store. I haven't done the homework on this
obviously but it is food for thought. Don't get me wrong, I am still in
favour of local small business but the issue is definitely not clear cut
and dried.
Joe
Dawie Coetzee posted:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/carfree_cities/message/10300
NEAL PEIRCE COLUMN
For Release Sunday, June 24, 2007
© 2007 Washington Post Writers Group
‘GREEN’ WALMART: AN OXYMORON?
By Neal Peirce
WalMart has been harvesting kudos for its dramatic “green” promises. Even
Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council have
gone on
record praising the massive retailer’s intentions to reduce
electricity usage in
its stores 20 percent by 2013 and to double the fuel economy of its
trucks by
2015.
But author-activist Stacy Mitchell has tossed a firecracker into the
WalMart-environmentalist lovefest. In a Grist magazine article and
subsequent
interview, she acknowledges that WalMart’s commitments are no mere
“greenwashing” -- that they will in fact save substantial electricity,
oil and
carbon impact.
But the green moves miss the mega-point, insists Mitchell, author of
the recent
book “Big-Box Swindle.” WalMart along with such chains as Target and Home
Depot divert customers from close-in neighborhood or town shopping to
the outer
fringes of metro areas.
In fact the big retail boxes have displaced tens of thousands of
neighborhood
and downtown businesses and focused the necessities of life into huge
stores
that draw car-borne shoppers from large areas. Longer and longer
drives are
necessary to buy milk or bread, pick up a container of paint or a
lawnmower
part.
snip
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