What’s Missing From Walmart’s Global Responsibility Report
For Immediate Release — April 17, 2012
Washington, D.C. – In response to Walmart’s release of its Global Responsibility Report, Food & Water Watch and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) have published the Top 10 Ways Walmart Fails on Sustainability. Since 2005, the country’s largest retailer has been making splashy announcements and issuing slick reports to highlight its environmental and social responsibility efforts. Food & Water Watch and ILSR contend that Walmart fails to live up to its promises and continues to ignore the fundamental problems with its business model that harm the environment, undermine healthy food choices, and exacerbate poverty.
“No amount of greenwash can conceal the fact that Walmart perpetuates an industrialized food system that diminishes our natural resources, causes excessive pollution, and forces smaller farmers and companies to get big or get out of business,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch.
“Once again, Walmart is using sustainability as a marketing tool to improve its public image and propel its growth — even as it continues to pave over critical habitat, increase its greenhouse gas emissions, and flood the market with shoddy products that go from factory to landfill in record time,” said Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher at ILSR.
Top 10 Ways Walmart Fails on Sustainability is based on ILSR’s report Walmart’s Greenwash: How the company’s much-publicized sustainability campaign falls short, while its relentless growth devastates the environment and Food & Water Watch’s report Why Walmart Can’t Fix the Food System.
Download Top 10 Ways Walmart Fails on Sustainability.
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance is a 38-year-old national nonprofit research and educational organization that works to support strong, community rooted, environmentally sound and equitable local economies. www.ilsr.org.
Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control. www.foodandwaterwatch.org
Contact: Food & Water Watch, Anna Ghosh: 415-293-9905, aghosh(at)fwwatch(dot)org
Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Stacy Mitchell: 207-774-6792 , smitchell@ilsr.org
