Wal-Mart Extends Its Influence to Washington

But others saw opportunity. Even the smallest changes within the company had the potential to resonate not only with its vast customer base -- 176 million weekly worldwide -- but also with the company's roughly 60,000 suppliers.

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"You can have the right role to play at the right time," said Michelle Harvey, an activist with Environmental Defense, a nonprofit group that recently opened an office in Bentonville to work more closely with Wal-Mart. "And you can change the trajectory."

One way in was S. Robson Walton, who joined the board of Conservation International in 2004 after scuba-diving with Seligmann, the group's chairman, in Costa Rica. A few months later, Seligmann mentioned that an old friend was looking for clients for a new consulting firm, called Blu Skye Sustainability.

That friend was Jib Ellison, who had led whitewater expeditions on five continents before becoming a consultant. Within months of meeting Walton, he was on a plane to Bentonville to meet with H. Lee Scott Jr., Wal-Mart's chief executive.

"We're getting hammered in the press. I know we don't know anything about our environmental impact," Ellison recalled Scott telling him during their meeting in a windowless conference room at Wal-Mart's modest headquarters. "Can you do some research and tell me where we might be exposed?"

Ellison responded: "With all due respect, Mr. Scott, if your concern is around the risks associated with your footprint environmentally and especially if you add your supply chain . . . let me save you years of work and millions and millions of dollars and just tell you: In all areas that matter, there's risk."

Scott hired him on the spot. Over the past three years, Ellison has helped Wal-Mart implement an ambitious environmental program. Wal-Mart, the country's largest private consumer of electricity, has taken steps to make its buildings 15 percent more energy-efficient. It created the first heavy-duty hybrid truck. Its executives carry miniature business cards to conserve paper. It has introduced organic baby clothes, fair-trade coffee and sustainably farmed seafood into its stores.

Wal-Mart says such achievements are good for the earth and good for business. Executives said they have become personally committed to improving the environment. Still, Wal-Mart acknowledges that its success so far is also good politics. Going green has slowly helped Wal-Mart make inroads with its critics.

"We're able to have positive conversations with elected officials that, a year or two ago, we weren't really able to have," Leslie Dach, a former Clinton administration aide who oversees Wal-Mart's corporate affairs and government relations, said at a meeting with analysts last month in Bentonville. "This company can make a real difference in sustainability, and they're choosing to kind of play with us in that space."

The Alliance to Save Energy, a coalition of mostly businesses and trade organizations, recognized Wal-Mart last year for its work in energy efficiency. Five months later, the group's president, Kateri Callahan, and Wal-Mart executive Charles Zimmerman spoke before a Senate energy subcommittee led by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who formerly chaired the alliance.

Dorgan had criticized Wal-Mart in his book on the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, titled "Take This Job and Ship It." But when it came to the environment, Dorgan found little to impugn.

"A number of us have disagreements with the marketing strategies of Wal-Mart," he said. "But there's no question that Wal-Mart is an unbelievable merchandiser and a very savvy business competitor.

If you, with that savvy judgment, can take a look at efficiency and say, 'This makes good business sense for us' . . . it ought to be a lesson for others."

Wal-Mart scored a coup last summer when former vice president Al Gore screened his film, "An Inconvenient Truth," at the company's headquarters to a standing ovation. Michael Marx, head of the Business Ethics Network, an umbrella organization for several activist groups, likened it to a "religious revival." Wal-Mart later donated $75,000 to Gore's nonprofit organization, the Climate Project.

"More and more opinion leaders, members of Congress, members of [nongovernmental organizations] have allowed Wal-Mart to get into their hearts and actually feel a lot better about us," Dach said during the meeting with analysts.

But the bridge between the retailer and its critics remains tenuous. In September, Wal-Mart Watch issued a report calling the company's business model "fundamentally unsustainable."

That same month, a coalition of 23 activist organizations delivered a scathing critique of Wal-Mart's environmental initiatives.

"They've realized that they can be green," Marx said. "But if they're not blue and community-friendly, they're not coming to town."