Word: wals
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...When Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott told the New York Times earlier this week that he was finished trying to build stores in New York City, one of his aides was quick to point out that he was only referring to Manhattan, where ground-floor space rents for about $500 a square foot, and not the city's other four boroughs. But when I talked to Scott the next day, he assured me that he said what he meant. The whole joint. He also pointed out that he was only one vote on Wal-Mart's real estate committee...
...hardly alone. There was also inane councilwoman Gale Brewer proclaiming victory over the terrible jobs Wal-Mart might bring to her Upper West Side district, so overrun with economic development that she can apparently turn companies away. Perhaps she's waiting for a Toyota plant. Brewer helps run a city where rookie cops earn $25,000 a year. On an hourly basis, that's barely above what Wal-Mart is paying in its Secaucus, N.J., store. Maybe the cops can get a second job to make ends meet, since they can't afford to live in the city they protect...
When a business with more than 7,000 stores, 1.8 million employees and $345 billion in sales changes its ways, it's hard not to notice. Wal-Mart has made itself the darling of greens with its pledge to install solar panels on many of its stores, switch to hybrid vehicles, conserve water and even buy wild-caught salmon. More important, its mandates are having an incalculable ripple effect through its 60,000 suppliers, which are being asked to join Wal-Mart's effort to reduce packaging, waste and energy use. And when Wal-Mart asks, there's little question...
...Wal-Mart is not alone. In January the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group that includes some of the biggest corporate players and energy users in the world--Alcoa, BP America, Duke Energy, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, Caterpillar and PG&E--asked the Federal Government to act aggressively on climate change, not least by imposing legal limits on the amount of industrial carbon dioxide emissions. The corporations know there's a virtue in going green, but they're also looking for some regulatory certainty before they make massive investments. What's more, there's money to be made...
...basics like tank tops and Capris but also dares to inch up the food chain of craftsmanship (think cashmere sweaters), avoiding the race to the bottom by refusing to woo price-conscious consumers and sell ever cheaper clothes made with ever cheaper labor--a trend driven by discounters like Wal-Mart and Kohl's that has rippled to specialty shops. He has also taken away the fashion-by-engineering ethic that made J. Crew predictably boring...