US based retail giant Wal-Mart is the subject of a detailed and lengthy report released earlier this month by environmental watchdog group The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). The report alleges numerous Chinese companies producing wood furniture including baby cribs for Wal-Mart are buying illegally harvested Russian timber that is destroying critical forest habitats.
The report includes multiple undercover investigations where EIA staff posed as timber buyers and company representatives looking for a manufacturer for their products. They approached companies actively producing products for Wal-Mart for the US market and found nearly all of the wood used in production was from illegal Russian sources.
The report claims companies producing products for Wal-Mart say the retail giant is aware of the source but turns a blind eye in favor of reducing production costs. By not taking any substantive action to address the problem Wal-Mart is indirectly encouraging the practice to continue.
The EIA report can be downloaded here.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Wal-Mart Buying Illegal Russian Timber for Products Sold in US Market
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1 comments:
I really enjoy reading your blog, it always has great insight. But I am very frustrated with the fact that so few people are talking about presidential candidates and their thoughts on global warming. Now that it is down to just a few candidates I would think that this would be a bigger issue.
Live Earth just picked up this topic and put out an article ( http://www.liveearth.org/news.php ) live earth is also asking why the presidential candidates are not being solicited for their stance on the issue of the climate change. I just saw a poll on www.EarthLab.com that says people care a lot about what their next leader thinks of global warming. Does anyone know of another poll or other results about this subject?
Here is the page where I saw the EarthLab poll: http://www.earthlab.com/life.aspx. This is a pretty legit website; they are endorsed by Al Gore and the alliance for climate protection and they have a carbon footprint calculator. Does anyone have a strong opinion about this like I do? No matter what your political affiliation is or who you vote for this is an important issue for our environment, our economy and for homeland security.
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