MANSUETO VENTURES PRESS RELEASES

An Environmentalist at Wal-Mart: Selling Out, or Progress?

Can an environmentalist do good working for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.? Adam Werbach, the former head of the Sierra Club, thinks so, but he has yet to convince many former friends and colleagues, reports Danielle Sacks in Fast Company's September issue (no link available yet).

Adam Werbach rose to prominence in 1996 by becoming the youngest president of the Sierra Club at the age of 23. But eventually, Mr. Werbach grew frustrated with what he felt was the environmental movement's failure to connect with Americans outside the urban coastal elite. In 2004, by which point he had left the Sierra Club to run his own consulting firm, Mr. Werbach shocked colleagues and associates with a speech decrying environmentalism's outreach problems. That declaration prompted one environmental group to drop him from the group's board, while friends phoned him to tell him he had lost his way. Mr. Werbach wondered whether they were right when Wal-Mart, which he had once called "a new breed of toxin," asked him to work for its sustainability program.

Mr. Werbach changed his mind about Wal-Mart after convincing himself that the retailer took environmentalist goals seriously. Under the company's voluntary Personal Sustainability Project designed by Mr. Werbach and his consulting firm, the company's 1.3 million U.S. employees are encouraged to develop a volunteer program around one step (quitting smoking, switching to organic food) that will improve his or her life, and benefit the planet.

Mr. Werbach's Wal-Mart mission continues to draw the ire of some in the environmental movement. "I have no idea what Adam believes anymore," says one. And Mr. Werbach acknowledges the inherent contradictions that arise in his current role. "Right now, I'm an insider with outsider tendencies, but I'm still trying to channel the outsider," he tells Fast Company. "I don't think you can be both. I mean, we'll see. I'm going to try. I'm trying." - Robin Moroney