English: How Wal-Mart keeps sucking me back in

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By Sonya English

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Let’s play a game. I’ll describe a new store, and you try to guess what it is. I like 20 questions better, but it doesn’t fit in my column space.

It’s not too big, about 15,000 square feet. It specializes in natural and organic foods. In it, you’ll find Seventh Generation’s green cleaning products. It delivers fresh, ready-to-eat meals. Although it sounds very Lawrence, it’s only in Arizona so far.

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Photo by Mariam Saifan

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Any guesses?

No, the Merc’s not starting a new store in Arizona.

But Wal-Mart is.

At the end of October, Wal-Mart opened four Marketside stores, which is a new retail concept and subsidiary of Wal-Mart.

The store looks nothing like the gargantuan warehouses that we know and sometimes resent. The logo is cute and friendly, showing a stack of veggies sitting beside the store name.

It looks as though Marketplace wants nothing to do with Wal-Mart. Well, neither do I. But we share the same problem: Wal-Mart owns us.

Unfair business practices, discrimination and killing small businesses are issues that some associate with Wal-Mart. The news-savvy may know stories of employees forced to work off the clock, corporate resistance to surveillance cameras in dangerous parking lots and strategically low wages to allow employees to earn government assistance. And yet, an estimated 90 percent of Americans shop at Wal-Mart at some time during the year.

I wish I could say it’s not me, but it is.

The brains behind Wal-Mart are so good it scares me. I try to quit Wal-Mart, and an organic grocery store is opened. You may laugh now, but wait until you try to break the dependency. I bet a store opens that caters to your tastes with bargain-bin pricing, too.

In light of this new endeavor, I’ve decided to confront my addiction to Wal-Mart and ask: How bad is it?

Seventh Generation is a company that makes green cleaning products and prides itself on environmental responsibility. In a blog post, CEO Jeffrey Hollender wrote that his company created an index to rate 10 mass retailers on social and environmental performance. Fifteen categories factored into the rating, including each retailer’s average hourly wage, the percentage of employees covered by health insurance, carbon and waste reduction goals and commitment to green building.

“To our great surprise, we found that Wal-Mart scored at or near the top in most categories,” Hollender wrote.

But what about the lawsuit for discrimination against women employees? It’s the largest workplace-bias lawsuit in history, according to Wal-Mart Watch, an investigation and advocacy group that challenged Wal-Mart in 2005 to increase transparency. And how will it reach zero waste if its new stores will use more energy than its energy-saving measures will save?

Wal-Mart has a massive influence in the world, meaning it is in a powerful position environmentally. I can’t help but think if it continues working toward significant change, it could have a greater influence than all the eco-friendly columns in the world.

It looks good, and yet, it’s Wal-Mart. The dark underbelly of the company is as vast as its environmental potential.

Affordable organics sound like a siren song to me, but I still have more than 20 questions about Wal-Mart and its new offspring.

— — English is an Overland Park junior in journalism and economics.

Comments

JConnor (anonymous) says...

Considering Wal-Mart's enormous distribution system, as well as the fact that it imports more from China than most first world countries do, I'm not optimistic about Marketside selling locally grown food in its stories or supporting sustainable agriculture.

December 10, 2008 at 12:28 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

connerm (anonymous) says...

Given the level of scrutiny Wal-Mart receives from the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and their daughter organizations, I'm confident that Wal-Mart will put its full effort into ensuring that its products are high quality, local, and sustainable.

January 15, 2009 at 2:17 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

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