Wal-Mart Greenwashing Makes Me Sick

Greenwashing or "Green Sheen" is all the rage these days. For those of you unfamiliar with the lingo, large companies try to shine on an environmental message in an attempt to improve their images in the eyes of the newly environmentally-conscious consumer. And a lot of the time, it just doesn't ring true. Want an example? Try swallowing the tripe in this new Wal-Mart campaign:


If all 200 million Wal-Mart shoppers went out and bought an eco-friendly light bulb...Wal-Mart's profits would go through the roof. Incremental sales actually yield HUGE profits (I once spoke with a copywriter who worked on Ragu spaghetti sauce, and her campaign objectives once were to get every Ragu customer to buy just one more jar of sauce per year - the revenue growth was enormous).

This ad is actually the least offensive of the bunch, as it actually deals with a product specifically designed for sustainability. The other ads (here and here) are for coffee and soy milk. Whaaa? We're told if we consume more, we're actually helping to foster sustainability. The Wal-Mart web site gives us the equation "You x 200 million = A brighter future." What a load of environmentally friendly fertilizer. AKA: horseshit. Wal-Mart's math is more like an equation for entropy, not sustainability.

While I'm all for green products and initiatives, the concept of telling people to shop to save the environment is almost as disgusting as being told the way to getting back to normalcy after 9/11 was to go to the mall. I was on the fence about Wal-Mart before. Now they've spurred me to sustain disdain for the company.

Wal-Mart: Devil or Acceptable Evil?

(Post taken in part from AgencySpy) The National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau has said that Wal-Mart’s ad claims that consumers can save $2,500 a year by shopping at the store is false. The NAD took issue with the statement that the average household saves that much money by shopping at Wal-Mart, and with the inference that such a savings can only occur at Wal-Mart stores and not other retailers. One reason the NAD says Wal-Mart couldn’t make such a claim was because the retailer's operations routinely cause competitors to offer deeper discounts on their merchandise to keep up.

OK...so, Wal-Mart creeps me out a little. The bad fluorescent lighting. The alleged poor treatment of its employees. The insistence on giving me smiley stickers (I have a weird thing with stickers...though I don't have to fear anymore since they retired the Smiley). But at first, I loved this ad campaign. The idea of showing people the wonderful things they can do with their savings...now that's an economic stimulus package that turns me on! Not to mention, for as much as Wal-Mart and other chains impact small, local businesses (as I've seen first-hand in my hometown), they DO create lots of jobs and DO create savings for the consumer. So, I see three options. 1.) Shop at Wal-Mart and enjoy the savings, accepting that it's kinda evil; 2.) Don't shop at Wal-Mart and don't enjoy the savings because it's kinda evil; 3.) Shop at Target. Mmm...Tar-jay.