We are trying something new at Wal-Mart…amidst the crazy fast, rapidly growing space of clean/green technologies we have found it pretty difficult to do two things:
1. Find the technologies that we should be implementing and
2. Be sure those that we know about are the best options with the most business potential and positive environmental impact.

With this in mind, we’ve decided to partner with Cleantech, a very large network of the people who have the ideas and the people who have the capital to give those ideas business potential.   To begin, we have identified seven initial opportunities we hope to find solutions for.  These first seven areas include: harnessing wind, utilizing organic waste, utilizing household hazardous waste, improving on current forklift battery practices, finding better building materials, utilizing waste and storm water, and utilizing cooking oil waste.

So, you are probably asking yourself why these areas and why is Wal-Mart doing this at all.  Well, first, we believe that these opportunities are just that; key areas of opportunity for us to reach toward our broader goals of zero waste and 100% renewable energy. 

Indeed, we believe they present unique opportunities for us to find technological advancements or encourage them in order to create the business model for more sustainable alternatives than what is widely used today.  Wal-Mart’s size affords it the unique ability, in many cases responsibility, to make substantial direct impact, and even more importantly, to catalyze the creation of new business models that can make broad change. 

I know this may sound unusual for Wal-Mart, but this is what we already do so well.  Our size allows us the unique and exciting opportunity to create markets for products you know…like a new yogurt that strengthens your immune system to market (DanActive, which really does work), or that inexpensive spinning toothbrush (Crest Spinbrush before it was bought by Crest first sold at Wal-Mart).  Why not get excited about using that same buying power to incentivize innovation toward sustainability?
 

So, do you have an idea for Wal-Mart?