Is it getting harder to hate Wal-Mart?

Until they alter their labor practices they will never be good for a community. There are lots of big box stores that buy products from abroad, or have questionable environmental credentials, but where Wal-Mart shines is in its unfair labor practices. It's a sad state of our country when many areas rely on the construction of a new Wal-Mart to create job opportunities.

To be fair, they do respond to a market need and I think their success is primarily a product of our society's penchant for glossing over the harm the big-box culture is doing to our country and world when it so suits us.

Wal-Mart is inherently ungreen. The problem being that they have big stores on the outside of town, so people have to drive farther to get to them. This of course it just the start of a long long list.

Walmart exploits their employees. They intentionally destroy local economies. Their scale makes them inherently unsustainable. All of their so-called green initiatives are intended to mask the other problems and you have fallen victim to their plan by publishing this survey.

In an age when we are trying to restore the lost vibrancy of our urban centres, Walmart comes in, sets up on the edge of town, creates parking lots twice the size that are required and tries to consider themselves "green"? I applaud the efforts on the product side, but the business model and building construction sides need drastic improvements. I don't shop there. Period.

The real problem is addiction to consumption, and Wal-mart is undeniably the drug of choice. Wal-mart can never be "good" because the whole model is unsustainable on so many levels. However, because of its size, Wal-mart is capable of having large effects on production chains, with ripple effects across the retail sector. The demands Wal-mart is placing on suppliers are more onerous than the legislation in many areas, so they are pushing the green agenda faster and further than government.

For me, it is hard to avoid Wal-Mart. Living in a rural community where the town I live in is the "big" town in a 15-20 mile radius, it's hard to try to buy locally or find items that are made from recycled materials. I personally don't like Wal-Mart. But if that's all you have nearby, that's where I have to shop.But I do try my best to buy from the local farmer's market for produce and look at labels on a lot of my purchases.