Can Anyone, Even Walmart, Stem The Heat-Trapping Flood Of Nitrogen On Farms?
From the NPR blog, All Things Considered
Author: Dan Charles.
The Environmental Defense Fund opened an office near Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., 10 years ago. It was part of a carefully plotted strategy to persuade the giant retailer that going green could be good for business. If it worked, it certainly could be good for the planet — Walmart's revenues are bigger than the entire economy of most countries.
"We really saw that working with companies could be transformative at a scale that was pretty unmatched," says Suzy Friedman, a senior director at EDF.
If you're looking for evidence that the strategy is working, there's this: Last year, Walmart unveiled Project Gigaton, a plan to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by a billion tons of carbon between now and 2030. That's almost as much carbon as what's released from the country's entire fleet of passenger cars and trucks in a year.
The cuts will come from the company's suppliers: the vast galaxy of companies that make the products it sells.