Last week at the annual Walmart shareholders meeting, the focus was on sustainabilty. Last week Rand Waddoups, Senior Director of Business Strategy and Sustainability for Wal-Mart talked to Leslie Guevarra at at Greener Design about the goals that drive Wal-Mart’s journey in sustainability.
You can read the full article here. Following is a key point summary.
Background on Walmart Sustainability
In 2005 Walmart set these goals:

100 percent renewables
zero waste and to
products on the shelves that sustain the environment

Progress on Waste:

measuring the waste on a store level
analyzing gos into the trash can
diverting some waste streams into new things:
- breaking down returned plastic products and …read more

Earth Day may have been started to raise awareness about conservation and all other things green, but it’s turned into a marketing machine. Here’s how it played out this Earth Week:
Wend’s Sassy the Sasquatch hit the Streets.
Sassy’s just as good of a marketer as the rest of us; honestly, he’s better. All it takes is a Sasquatch wave and people stop to talk to him… or listen to him grunt — since we’re still working on teaching him the alphabet.
The Cause Marketer showcased the best green blogs. Check out their picks:
10 green blogs that can help you make a difference …read more

Today as we celebrate Earth Day, I wanted to share some resources and information that can help your business “go green”. There are many different way that you can “Go Green” in business and a few are listed below:

Research how others in your industry are “going green”
Analyze your business and define areas where you can “go green”
Create a list of things that you can do to “go green” according to your analysis
Develop an implementation list and go for it
Encourage others to analyze their business and find areas where they can “go green”
Check out the following resources to help your with …read more

Just in time for Earth Day, Welwind Energy is busy drumming up funding on Wall Street. From March 12 – 16, the Company met with various financing groups and investor relations firms in New York City. They also held a meet and greet with numerous members from the investment community.
The Company has ongoing discussions regarding possible financing for its projects, which center on providing the best resource option available for renewable energy, protecting our environment, empowering communities, bolstering local economies and respecting the rights of future generations. The company was founded to build, own and operate wind farms on an …read more

Whether you own your own company, work for someone else, or are considering starting a business, you can learn about being successful and profitable by reading business tips from other entrepreneurs and experts.
DK Publishing puts out a wonderful series called Essential Managers. The Essential Managers books are practical, paperback guides about some of today’s hottest business topics.
This week, we are giving five readers the opportunity to win two of the books.
Green Business
Everyone is interested in going green with eco-friendly business practices. Green Business gives hard-working guidance on how to do business ethically and sustainably, while still turning a tidy profit.
Achieving …read more

Not too much to drive you to drink this week.
Here’s are some money stories for your weekend:

The Business Insider Green Sheet reported on the drop in venture capital flowing to green technologies. Come on guys, Earth Day’s coming! (Come back Monday for the ABCs of VC.)
SustainableBusiness.com covered the national youth movement to get Congress to pass stronger climate legislation to address emission reduction targets, transition America to 100% clean energy, and eliminates loopholes that allow companies to continue polluting.
The Third Sector looked at a new report on the financing crisis in non-profits. (In my community, the United Way just cut all distributions by …read more

Projectmanagement411 had a fantastic February with lively discussion on a plethora of business project topics. Those who participate make me better for it- hopefully they feel the same as we all grapple with the thorny business issues of the day.
Here is what we talked about. Just click on the topics to gain immediate access to some of the most lively, and at times meaty, business conversation on the web:
Social Security- Tied to Financial Services Industry Failures? Privatization Is a Ruse?
Knowing Yourself and Communicating It
Green Business- Can Result in Green Anxiety, Green Anxiety? Apply Business Basics First, Green Hype Can Distract
Barriers …read more

APICS magazine’s excellent “The Business Behind Green” by Tim Becker of Probity Business Group (membership required), warns to watch out for the hype behind green:
“A recent study by TerraChoice….reviewed 1,018 products making environmental claims. Only one product met all six of TerraChoice’s criteria for truthfulness.”
This overstated environmental record should caution companies to avoid overstating it’s own products and services:
“Green marketing likely will be held to a higher standard-similar to marketing of health-related products.”
The current media darling is climate change, but Becker warns of other environmental issues that can have as large, or larger, impact:
Water: “…70 percent of the earth’s freshwater …read more

APICS magazine’s “The Business Behind Green” by Tim Becker reveals a “green anxiety” in corporate America due to the increased media coverage of all things green. Responding to “green anxiety” can be hazardous especially when business basics are not applied to green projects; i.e, running the numbers and aligning green projects with corporate strategies.
The article encourages doing project business cases, i.e., running the numbers, but also cautions consideration of some unique factors, for example:
“[Only] a small number of customers will pay a significant premium for green products; the vast majority will not. A recent study of wood products found that …read more

Green. The word evokes conversations about global warming, the environment, and plastic bag bans. An excellent APICS magazine article by Tim Becker of Probity Business Group, “The Business Behind Green“, introduced the topic (sorry, hefty membership to APICS is required to view the article):
“Eventually, the green tide will ebb as environmental stories are pushed off the front page by some other pressing crisis. However, it is clear that environmentalism has reached a level that requires a coherent and long-term corporate strategy.”
This idea of being on the “front page” makes it difficult for businesses to know what action to take. Environmentalism …read more