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LONDON - Wal-Mart chief executive Lee Scott has unveiled a new environmental plan, challenging employees, suppliers and customers to remove non-renewable energy from their lives.
The world's biggest retailer revealed its latest plans a day ahead of the release of an authoritative report on climate change giving a grim warning of rising temperatures and sea levels worldwide.
"It is the responsibility of every corporation to be more sustainable," Scott told an audience of business leaders in London.
Every week 176 million customers shop in Wal-Mart stores in 14 countries and the company is considered one of few able to use its corporate muscle to make direct changes to global energy consumption.
Scott launched the first stage of Wal-Mart's sustainability campaign last year and set the agenda for big business by announcing a goal of one day using only renewable energy and creating zero waste.
In that effort, the company has built experimental stores to test different ways to conserve water or electricity while also cutting waste.
This week he went a stage further, announcing the launch of "Global Innovation Projects" aimed at finding ways to encourage suppliers, employees and customers to take non-renewable energy off shelves and out of people's lives.
As an example, he said that if Wal-Mart succeeded in its goal to sell 100 million compact fluorescent light bulbs by the end of this year, it would have saved consumers US$3 billion ($4.45 billion) in electrical costs over the life of the bulbs, equal to taking 700,000 cars off the road.
- REUTERS
