A powerhouse duo on the green front

Aman Desouza, director of innovation and sustainability at CertainTeed Corp., of Valley Forge PA, visits a project in Broomall PA where his company is testing a yet-to-be-released photovoltaic roof able to generate solar power.

Wal-Mart and the U.S. government are driving the movement toward less-wasteful business ways.

By Diane Mastrull

President Obama is not expected to be there. Nor is the head of Wal-Mart, Mike Duke.

But when Valley Forge building-products manufacturer CertainTeed Corp. unveils its "very, very first baby step" into the world of photovoltaic roofing next week at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas, Obama and Duke presumably will be pleased.

In the fall, each took action to inspire greater commitment to protecting natural resources and working less wastefully, known in the green vernacular as sustainability.

Obama signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to practice what the administration is urging all Americans to do to aid the environment and help build a thriving clean-energy economy: Use less energy, recycle more, and build and buy in a way that doesn't waste resources and tax the planet.

Duke, Wal-Mart's president and chief executive officer, announced a sustainability-index initiative to influence suppliers to produce and deliver their products more efficiently and with an environmental sensitivity.

Though Obama and Duke acted independently, what they did has the collective potential to significantly advance what has been a slowly evolving movement - one that draws skepticism from those who wonder whether the payoff is worth the expense.

"What you have is the 500-pound gorillas in the private sector and the public sector making these [sustainability] decisions . . . and they're going to drive the rest of the market," said Joshua M. Kaplowitz, an environmental and commercial lawyer at Drinker, Biddle & Reath L.L.P. and head of an in-house task force charged with improving the firm's sustainability efforts.

The U.S. government is the nation's single largest user of energy. It owns nearly half-a-million buildings and more than 600,000 fleet vehicles, and it buys more than half a trillion dollars' worth of goods and services each year.

Wal-Mart offers equally colossal credentials: It reported $401 billion in sales and 2.1 million employees worldwide last year.

With the federal government and one of the world's largest retailers putting their substantial heft behind the cause, the results could be a real game changer, said Shari Shapiro, an environmental law associate at Obermayer, Rebmann, Maxwell & Hippel L.L.P. in Center City.

Shapiro couched her comment by saying that other steps - such as passage of a climate-change bill - are important to achieving a national embrace of sustainability. But she acknowledged that "there are no two bigger forces in our society."

The order Obama signed Oct. 5 requires federal agencies to, among other things, increase energy efficiency; measure, report, and reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions; conserve and protect water resources; and leverage acquisitions to foster markets for sustainable technologies and environmentally preferable materials.

It also calls for federal buildings to be green and for 95 percent of federal purchases to meet sustainability requirements. That it does not require 100 percent compliance is an acknowledgment that sustainability provisions might not be applicable for such purchases as military weapons systems, said Michelle Moore, Obama's federal environmental executive.

Under the order, each federal agency must appoint a sustainability officer. Every six months, the Office of Management and Budget will issue a public scorecard grading each agency on its sustainability performance.

In April, recommendations are due on which sustainability criteria to require of federal contractors, Moore said.

Wal-Mart's sustainability index also is a work in progress, expected to be rolled out in three phases.

First, the company is sending out surveys to its more than 100,000 global suppliers to evaluate their sustainability. Questions focus on four areas: energy and climate; material efficiency; natural resources; and people and community, according to Wal-Mart's Web site.

The second phase involves creation of a consortium of universities to help build a database of product life cycles. Arizona State University and the University of Arkansas will administer the consortium, which Wal-Mart is encouraging other retailers and suppliers to join.

The last step is determining how to provide customers with that information so they can make purchases in a more sustainable way.

Critics note that Wal-Mart - because of its size and influence - is known for driving down wages and putting out of business smaller competitors that cannot keep pace on pricing. Those same people are hoping its power and scope can make Wal-Mart a sustainability inspiration.

"We have already seen the type of change Wal-Mart can have on our economy," said Shapiro, who also writes the blog www.greenbuildinglaw.com. "So if it has the same impact on sustainability, it will be major."

That assessment was echoed by Aman Desouza, director of innovation and sustainability at CertainTeed.

In recent years, the company has worked to develop more environmentally sensitive, higher-performing products to meet consumers' green demands. That effort yielded the new EnerGen solar system that CertainTeed will debut next week in Las Vegas.

The system consists of lightweight, thin-film photovoltaic laminates that integrate with roofing shingles, and its installation does not require asphalt-rooftop penetration, as traditional solar panels do.

Though expanding the company's line of sustainable products is important to CertainTeed, so is improving its commitment to operating more efficiently and at minimal impact to the environment, Desouza said. It has been working with a consultant, Sustainable Solutions Corp., of Royersford, to find ways to do so.

There is a degree of vindication in that, Desouza said, since Wal-Mart is making sustainability such a priority for itself and the companies it does business with.

"The more companies like Wal-Mart start doing things like that . . . the easier it becomes for everyone."

Is Whole Foods Bad for the Planet?

By Kate Sheppard

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has probably brought more people to organic foods than anyone else in the United States. And many of the folks shopping at his markets undoubtedly consider themselves to be environmentally aware. They might even believe that by purchasing their groceries at Whole Foods outlets they are doing their part to help the planet. But certainly many of them would probably be startled to learn of of Mackey's position on climate change: he's a global warming denier.

In a recent New Yorker profile of Mackey, the Whole Foods chief argues that there is no scientific consensus regarding the causes of climate change. He lists Heaven and Earth: Global Warming--the Missing Science, a skeptical take on warming, as one of his recent favorite reads. He frets that the "hysteria about global warming" will cause the United States "to raise taxes and increase regulation, and in turn lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty." He adds: "Historically, prosperity tends to correlate to warmer temperatures."

Mackey, of course, is wrong about the absence of a scientific consensus, and his theory that warmer temperatures produce prosperity is, to say the least, wacky. But his embrace of climate change denial is not truly a surprise, for Mackey is an unabashed libertarian, opposed to the very idea of "regulation" and "taxes," no matter their purpose. He may be the vegan CEO of the country's largest natural market chain, but he voted for Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr last year--because Ron Paul wasn't on the ballot. There's long been a debate over whether Mackey is a do-gooder or a simply a profiteer in disguise. (The whole sock-puppeting incident made him seem more of a bizarre egomaniac than anything else).

Though many of his shoppers are concerned about personal and planetary health, his latest revelation so far has gotten scant attention. But when Mackey penned an anti-health care reform op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last August, it spurred a swift call for boycott from progressives. "Whole Foods has built its brand with the dollars of deceived progressives," proclaimed the the "Boycott Whole Foods" Facebook page, which had 33,829 members at last count. "Let them know your money will no longer go to support Whole Foods' anti-union, anti-health insurance reform, right-wing activities." A website promoting the boycott also sprang up. Mackey's anti-labor positions have also triggered considerable ire, after he compared having a union to "having herpes." But there's yet no virtual call to eschew Whole Foods because of Mackey's global warming position.

But that doesn't mean there's no potential problem here for Whole Foods. The company, which pulls in $4 billion a year, does try to promote itself as a firm that cares about the environment. Its official blog touts climate-related causes like rainforest preservation, waste reduction, and the awareness about carbon footprint of food. During my last visit to the store, I was urged to sign up to receive my shopping receipts via email, to save paper. But their focus is on what customers can do to reduce their impact—including in one post an admonition to "vote with your dollars" by shopping at local and at socially-conscious businesses.

The company ranked among the biggest purchasers of green power last year, but neither the company nor its CEO has advocated for environmental policies in line with the views held by their customer base. Meanwhile, companies widely scorned by progressives have stepped up efforts to deal with climate change by both implementing sustainable practices and advocating for sound policy. Chief among them is Walmart, which recently joined with a number of other retailers, universities, suppliers, and the EPA to form the Sustainability Consortium. Its goal is to create an industry-wide sustainability index for the lifecycle of products. And a number of consumer-oriented businesses, such as Nike, Gap, and Starbucks, are working through Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy to pass climate change legislation. Whole Foods, despite its image, is not part of that coalition. And with Mackey its most visible officer, Whole Foods essentially can be counted as part of the corporate opposition to the pending legislation.

Mackey did step down as chairman of Whole Foods' board last week, but he remains both the CEO and a board member. He says that the move was more ceremonial. There's yet no indication whether this shift will lead to any changes in the company's climate-related policies.

Last year, Mackey penned a book touting the "power of conscious capitalism." He may not want his customers who care about global warming to use that power when they are deciding where to buy their organic arugula.