Wal-Mart Finally Wants to Maximize Profits
Sounds a bit goofy, doesn’t it? But Mr. H. Lee Scott, Jr., the oft-maligned president and CEO of Wal-Mart, said about as much during an interesting Q&A session last month at an economics conference in California devoted to discussing “environmental capital.” (As a bonus, click the embedded video for a confusing conversation circling the topic of bottled water).
As part of his talks, Mr. Scott proclaimed that reducing waste (in the form of excess cardboard and plastic packaging) is not only an environmental issue, but an economic one. In his wrap-up remarks, Mr. Scott pointed to the current economic downturn as proof that this is the perfect time for Wal-Mart to cut costs. “When is a better time?” he asked.
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Let’s ask the people at IKEA, who have used this common-sense dictum as a base for their business model since day-one. Take this snippet from a longer interview (that’s well-worth the read) with Mr. Thomas Bergmark, IKEA’s head of social and environmental responsibility.
“One of the cornerstones since IKEA was founded more than 60 years ago is to care about resources — we are clever with resources. For the first 20 years, this was only about turning and twisting the materials to utilize them in the best possible way, to save on material and thereby save on costs. But today we know it’s a perfect win-win also for the environment. You save on the resources, you save on the environment.”
This isn’t intended to be Wal-Mart vs. IKEA. It’s more a question of “Why now?” Did it really take Wal-Mart this long to figure out they can save money by cutting waste? Am I missing something here?