Wal-Mart Stores Inc "green" foray into "green" electronics is proving to be more complicated than its foray into "green" packaging.
Also, there are no uniform US guidelines regarding energy consumption or recycling, so Wal-Mart is sorting through a maze of international and local standards.
"We'd like to see some kind of federal legislation that would take all the individual state programs and bring it together," said Kevin O'Connor, Wal-Mart's general merchandise manager for consumer electronics, in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, this week in Las Vegas.
Wal-Mart has set a goal of one day using only renewable energy and creating zero waste, and it has challenged its suppliers to remove nonrenewable energy from their lives.
Because of its status as the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart is considered one of the few retailers with enough heft to make direct changes to global energy consumption.
While the efforts may help the environment, they are also designed to help Wal-Mart's bottom line.
WHO PAYS FOR THE GREENING?
"That's one of the reasons the bad stuff was used in the first place -- it was cheaper," he said.
Delattre said one way to deal with the higher prices is to tell consumers that a product might cost more upfront but would bring future savings if it consumed less energy.
But at the end of the day, Wal-Mart says its green push has to extend beyond itself to save costs for everyone involved.
"It's not about driving a Wal-Mart program," said Gary Severson, who oversees electronics at Wal-Mart's US stores. "We're trying to get to a national standard ... because you don't get the scale unless we're able to drive it beyond us."