Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries tagged as Wal-Mart

Free Economies and the Common Good

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Could the early socialists have envisioned an organization such as Wal-Mart or predicted the thousands of jobs created by such a firm? In this week’s Acton Commentary, Rev. Robert A. Sirico examines the “common good” and free markets in this excerpt from a recent speech at the first annual Free Market Forum, sponsored by Hillsdale College’s Center for the Study of Monetary Systems and Free Enterprise.

Read the entire commentary here.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Business and Society at 10:42 | Comment (1) | Trackback

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common good, enterprise, Wal-Mart

Earth Day and the Environment

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Over the last week I’ve done a couple radio interviews related to my op-ed in the Detroit News, “U.S. must move beyond Earth Day slogans.”

Thanks to The Bill Meyer Show out of Medford, Oregon, who had me on in the morning last Thursday.

And thanks also to The Paul Edwards Program for having me on yesterday. I spoke with Paul at some length about the complications of owning Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFLs). In the course of the interview (which you can listen to here), I referenced a couple webpages that I’ll pass along.

The first is 18Seconds.org, hosted by Yahoo!, at which you can track the sales of CFLs in your state or locality. Michigan has bought over 1.2 million CFLs since the beginning of 2007.

There is some information on the mercury in CFLs fairly deep into the “Why Switch?” section. Here’s a taste of the copy: "All fluorescent lights contain trace amounts of mercury. But don’t worry — there is far less mercury in CFLs than in thermometers or old thermostats. Plus, using these bulbs helps
prevent mercury from being released into the air from coal-powered power plants. When they burn out years down the road, recycle them."

But here’s a second piece I talked about that might take issue with those claims: “The CFL mercury nightmare,” by Steven Milloy of JunkScience.com. Milloy describes the experience of Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, who faced a $2,000 clean-up bill when she accidentally broke a CFL, exposing mercury in her daughter’s bedroom.

Governments and corporations are engaging in huge campaigns to push the use of CFLs. The Home Depot gave away 1 million CFLs in an Earth Day promotion, and Wal-Mart is advocating them heavily. Check out this promotional video, “Energy Makeover,” from In Front with Wal-Mart, the company’s newest webcast program.

If the mercury in these CFLs, almost universally acknowledged to be a harmful environmental hazard, turns out to have serious health consequences, companies like Wal-Mart and The Home Depot could be opening themselves up to litigation. They may need to attach some sort of warning label (hopefully not a useless one that would win this contest).

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 15:31 | Comments (2) | Trackback

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cfls, environment, mercury, stewardship, the home depot, wal-mart

Wal-Mart Environmentalism

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

“The environment is begging for the Wal-Mart business model,“ says H. Lee Scott Jr., CEO of Wal-Mart Stores in a NYT article, ”Power-Sipping Bulbs Get Backing From Wal-Mart."

The piece discusses Wal-Mart’s campaign to increase the sales of compact fluorescent bulbs, as compared to traditional incandescent bulbs. As Michael Barbaro writes, “A compact fluorescent has clear advantages over the widely used incandescent light — it uses 75 percent less electricity, lasts 10 times longer, produces 450 pounds fewer greenhouse gases from power plants and saves consumers $30 over the life of each bulb. But it is eight times as expensive as a traditional bulb, gives off a harsher light and has a peculiar appearance.”

I’ve converted probably half of the bulbs in my home to CFLs (compact fluorescent lights), but have run into problems when trying to use them in some places. Lights that use dimmer switches, for instance, don’t work well with CFLs. And some CFLs won’t fit into light fixtures designed to accommodate incandescent bulbs.

Wal-Mart’s clout has begun to affect the light bulb manufacturing business, as producers like GE struggle to change their emphasis from production of incandescents to CFLs.

And on the demand side, what’s called for in convincing consumers to go with the CFLs is a basic economic lesson: you are sometimes better off spending more in the short-term for long-term gain: “Wal-Mart will have to persuade its traditional consumers that it is worth paying a bit more at the checkout counter to save a significant amount money down the line, a seemingly simple task that few companies ever accomplish. It is particularly difficult at a retailer that has long emphasized ‘always low prices.’”

As is so often the case, the best economic decision is the one that makes best use of both financial and environmental resources.

Update: This story is getting major attention across the blogosphere and MSM, including a NYT editorial here, and posts here and here.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 14:26 | Comment (1) | Trackback

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CFLs, economics, energy, environment, light bulbs, stewardship, wal-mart

Windy City Wal-Mart

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

What might a big city Wal-Mart look like? Until now, such a question was only answerable through some imaginative speculation.

Wal-Mart has announced plans to open the first store within Chicago’s city limits in the Austin neighborhood this summer. The 145,000-square-foot facility will also be the first to have what is called a “green roof,” 67,000 square foot “covered like a rug with flowering, cactus-like plants that live in cold weather.”

The roof is designed by Roof-scapes, Inc. of Philadelphia and will “have only 3 inches of soil, no irrigation system and will be designed to reduce rainfall runoff and, in conjunction with other green roofs, lower the city’s air temperature,” according to Charlie Miller, a Roof-scapes spokesman.

But perhaps even more interesting than what the store will look like on the outside is what will be missing from the inside. According to the Sun-Times,

will have no full-line grocery store, a concession Wal-Mart made to the City Council, which feared Wal-Mart would undersell smaller grocery stores and put them out of business. Wal-Mart will sell a limited amount of non-perishable, frozen and refrigerated food in addition to clothing, electronics, jewelry and household goods, but will sell no fresh fruit or produce. Those restrictions were necessary to win City Council approval of a zoning change to clear the way for Chicago’s first Wal-Mart.

According to a 2003 project by the Center for Cultural Understanding and Change, the Austin community had a median income of $33,633 in 2000, but “because it is so large, it has pockets of growing wealth, as well as signs of continuing poverty. ‘It’s interesting,’ described an Austin resident, ”you’ve got the rich people and the poor people around here.’"

The City Council, in its wisdom, decided that there is a certain price level that groceries shouldn’t go under (in the interests of the community, of course).

What happened to consumer freedom? No one is forced to patronize Wal-Mart...the residents could willingly pay more at the smaller grocery stores if that’s what they wanted. They might well value cheaper produce more than they do intimate neighborhood stores.

Indeed, I suspect that the poorer residents of the neighborhood might rather spend their hard-earned money getting more for less at Wal-Mart. But that choice won’t be available in Chicago, at least not yet, thanks to the special interests of the Chicago City Council. (Thanks to John Powers for the tip.)

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Business and Society at 06:43 | Leave a comment | Trackback

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austin, chicago, city council, green roof, wal-mart