FYI RE: WAL-MART: http://archives.cjr.org/language_corner/language_corner_040714.php
STEPHANIE SY: With sprawling
supercenters and close to twelve thousand stores worldwide, Wal-Mart, may be
best known for low prices that local stores can't
match. Now, the planet’s number
one company, by revenue, wants to be known as a leader in the fight against
climate change.
KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN, CHIEF
SUSTAINABILITY OFFICER, WALMART: At
Wal-Mart, Sustainability really is core to our mission.
STEPHANIE SY: Kathleen McLaughlin is
Wal-Mart’s Chief Sustainability Officer, she’s charged with selling walmart’s climate vision to shareholders.
KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN: It’s critical for business. It’s important for customers and for
communities. We’re seeing effects already in things like supply security of
different food commodities.
STEPHANIE SY: Wal-Mart’s response to
climate change began more than a decade ago. In 2005, then CEO Lee Scott
pledged to curb Wal-Mart’s emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide,
which cause the atmosphere to trap heat and warm the earth.
Scott
started moving the company toward clean power sources like wind and solar, with
a goal of eventually getting 100 percent of its energy from renewables.
KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN: It was a realization about capability and about scale and about
how we can use that for good. Wal-Mart has unique assets as a retailer, just
given the reach that we have across categories, the reach we have across
countries and across suppliers, and the recognition that we could bring those
capabilities to bear on the most pressing social and environmental issues that
our customers face in ways that are really relevant for business..
STEPHANIE SY: Wal-Mart, headquartered
in Bentonville, Arkansas, began by improving the fuel efficiency of its vast
fleet of trucks that deliver goods to its stores.
ERIC BENGE, WALMART: So
Mike, when you’re ready, we’ll crank it up...
STEPHANIE SY: Using a simulator,
Wal-Mart retrains its truck drivers on gear-shifting to increase their fuel
savings. Operators can have up to a 30 percent impact on fuel efficiency based
on how they drive, and their job performance is judged accordingly.
The
company says, improved driving and upgraded trucks have saved the retailer
nearly $1 billion since 2005.
MARK VANDERHELM, WALMART: Wal-Mart has been the driver of a lot of new technologies in the
energy efficiency space.
STEPHANIE SY: Mark Vanderhelm is Wal-Mart’s Vice President of Energy.
Wal-Mart
has saved energy and money in its store operations by demanding more efficient
equipment from vendors that provide its lighting, refrigeration, and heating
and cooling systems.
In
its push for more renewable energy, the company has installed solar panels on
the rooftops of 364 Wal-Mart and Sam’s Clubs. That only about eight percent of
all its stores in the U.S., but the panels make Wal-Mart the nation's second
biggest commercial generator of solar power.
KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN: The
biggest challenge in the U.S. is making it economic. We would love to see more
availability of renewable energy sources that is at price parity with other
sources.
STEPHANIE SY: In other words,
Wal-Mart’s ambitious energy goals aim also to save money.
So,
in its home base of Arkansas, where a lack of state government incentives for
renewables make conventional fossil fuel power cheaper, you won’t see any solar
panels on the local Wal-Mart stores.
While
the company has pledged to be 100 percent powered by renewables, it hasn’t said
when, and right now only 17 percent of Walmart’s domestic power comes from
renewable sources.
To
provide guidance in achieving its climate change goals, Wal-Mart has partnered
with the Environmental Defense Fund, or EDF. Fred Krupp is the group’s
president.
Is
Wal-Mart doing enough?
FRED KRUPP, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND: The scale of Wal-Mart is hard to wrap your head around. They have
220 million people shopping there every week. In the United States, they sell
about a third of all the food that we buy at retail stores. They can always do
more. But what they have shown so far is a serious commitment, and the journey
is an ongoing one of improvement.
STEPHANIE SY: Jenny Ahlen is an EDF
supply chain specialist based in Bentonville, Arkansas.
JENNY AHLEN, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND: The things that we buy and consume and how they are made and used
and disposed of have a huge impact on the planet. So grocery is contributing
half of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. retail sector. And that’s due
to both the volume, but also the high level of greenhouse gas impacts embedded
in that food.
STEPHANIE SY: And Wal-Mart is the
largest grocer in the world.
JENNY AHLEN: They are.
STEPHANIE SY: So this is a hot spot.
Wal-Mart’s mission has
grown to not only reduce its own stores’ impact on climate change, but to
compel its tens of thousands of suppliers to transform their practices.
At
Wal-Mart’s urging, EDF helped pork producer Smithfield to optimize fertilizer
use on crops used to feed its pigs, reducing the amount of the greenhouse gas
nitrous oxide released into the atmosphere.
The
reductions by Smithfield and other suppliers contributed to Wal-Mart taking
credit for meeting a goal, in 2015, of reducing emissions by 20 million metric
tons, the equivalent of taking nearly four million cars off the road for a
year.
Wal-Mart’s
newest initiative is called “Project Gigaton,” which aims to persuade suppliers
to remove 50 times more greenhouse gases — or one billion metric tons — by
2030, about the same amount of pollution as Germany emits in a year.
Wal-Mart, known for
squeezing suppliers to keep prices low, is putting a green squeeze on them now,
though one that’s voluntary.
FRED KRUPP: It sends a message to
their 100,000 suppliers all around the world: If you want your products on our
shelves, cut your pollution.
STEPHANIE SY: Ninety percent of
Wal-Mart’s overall greenhouse gas impact comes from its supply chain, and
dozens of its major suppliers have already signed on to project gigaton.
Wal-Mart hopes that encouraging its suppliers to cut emissions will have a
multiplier effect.
One of those
participating suppliers was already forging its own path to sustainability.
The
candy maker Mars, Inc, best known for M&M’s and Snickers bars, has set an
aggressive target of using “zero carbon” in its operations by 2040, eliminating
all greenhouse gas emissions.
BARRY PARKIN, MARS, INC. CHIEF SUSTAINABILITY OFFICER: Field is actually 18 acres, so it’s pretty big...
STEPHANIE SY: Barry Parkin, Mars’s
Chief Sustainability Officer, showed us the vast solar farm in New Jersey the
company built eight years ago.
It
now provides about five percent of the power used by the Mars chocolate factory
in nearby Hackettstown, which churns out half of the M&M’s sold in the U.S.Parkin says the falling price of renewable energy
technology, like solar, makes the investments pay off.
BARRY PARKIN: We've done this at cost
parity or better. In some cases, our costs are now lower as a result of using
renewable energy.
STEPHANIE SY:So we're not going to see the price of M&M’s skyrocketing
because Mars has made commitments to the environment?
BARRY PARKIN: No, absolutely not. So
this is not just good for the environment. It's it's
good for Mars. It's good for consumers, and it's also good for the landowners
that we're working with.
STEPHANIE SY: Mars has a long-term
contract to buy the power produced by this massive wind farm in West Texas -
enough to offset the electricity used in its entire U.S. operation.
Parkin believes that global
efforts to curb climate change will eventually lead to fossil fuels becoming
more expensive.
BARRY PARKIN: We believe there will at
some point be a price on carbon. We're thinking long term, we're thinking that
if we are ahead of the curve here and we're reducing our carbon footprint in
line with the science faster than our competitors, then we can have a
competitive advantage.
STEPHANIE SY: Food companies like Mars
are also planning for disruptions to their agricultural supplies caused by
climate change, including the cocoa for its chocolate.
BARRY PARKIN: Seventy percent of the
world's cocoa comes from a small region in West Africa. And all of the climate
models say that that region is going to become drier and that is not good for
cocoa. So those millions of farmers there, all the predictions say is they're
going to start to struggle.
STEPHANIE SY: The risks of climate
change to business have now led half of the world’s 500 largest public
companies to set sustainability goals. And a report released this April by
several environmental researchers found energy efficiency projects saved these
companies nearly $4 billion last year.
In
addition, after President Trump pulled the United States government out of the
Paris Climate Accords, Wal-Mart and Mars were among the companies that signed a
letter pledging to continue to meet their voluntary targets.
But
Wal-Mart’s growing business may be in conflict with its sustainability mission.
Wal-Mart’s total retail square-footage has expanded by 43 percent in the past
decade, and along with it, its self-reported carbon emissions went up 9
percent, even as the pace of its emissions slowed.
Wal-Mart is still
building new stores. It is still increasing its carbon footprint. How do you
answer the broader question of whether Wal-Mart can ever be truly
Earth-friendly?
KATHLEEN McLAUGHLIN: We’re
expanding our footprint, but we believe that our model, so the way we manage
our own store operations, the way we work with suppliers, actually optimizes
and lowers the footprint to deliver the same amount of product to people. If
you look at the scale and ambition of our efforts and what we’ve actually
achieved, I’m actually quite excited about it.
STEPHANIE SY: By 2025, walmart says it plans to reduce
its carbon emissions by 18 percent from its 2015 levels. As ever, the company
that has transformed communities and consumers is striking a path… and
expecting others to follow.
###
|
TIMECODE |
LOWER
THIRD |
1 |
1:15 |
KATHLEEN MCLAUGHLIN WAL-MART |
2 |
3:50 |
FRED KRUPP ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND |
3 |
4:47 – 4:49 |
EDF |
4 |
5:39 |
FRED KRUPP ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND |
5 |
5:47 |
[BENTONVILLE, AR] STEPHANIE SY SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT |
6 |
7:12 – 7:17 |
MARS, INC |
7 |
7:33 |
BARRY PARKIN MARS, INC |
8 |
8:28 – 8:32 |
JUNE 1 |
9 |
9:15 |
KATHLEEN MCLAUGHLIN WAL-MART |