Wal-Mart and the greening of public relations

There is a fascinating special section in the Wall Street Journal today entitled ECO:nomics: Creating Environmental Capital (subscription). The section came from their conference held a few days ago under the same title.

Everything I've read in the section is fascinating, but the interview with H. Lee Scott Jr. of Wal-Mart By Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal contained this little gem right at the end:

MR. MURRAY: When you launched this program several years ago, Wal-Mart at the time was getting some extraordinarily bad public relations. Today, if you look at the way Wal-Mart has been written about over the course of the past year, these green initiatives have generated enormously good public relations. Some people would say that's why you're doing it. This is all about public relations.

MR. SCOTT: You just need to work with our people. These things are real. The differences we are making are real. We face a number of challenges, and part of the challenges we face are related to the fact that we have probably the largest, most highly financed campaign against us in the history of business. Part of the issues we face are because we are not as good as we should be.

We sat down and we said 10 years from now what will the people in the company wish we had done, such as we wish that the prior generation in management might have done? And the thing that stuck was that this world is going to become more and more sensitive to environmental sustainability. Whether it's three years from now or five years or 10 or 15, ultimately society is going to hold you accountable for whether or not you participated appropriately and the role you played in advancing this area of environmental sustainability.

Here's a video excerpts from the interview:

It's something I've talked about before, but Wal-Mart has seen an almost unbelievable jump in public perception due to their leadership on green issues. That opportunity is out there for every company...until the government forces it on them.