Walmart, green for the money?

So, of course everyone talks about how Walmart is the big, bad giant of the retail industry. Of course, just look at the top billionaires list and you’ll see that the Waltons are doing pretty well for themselves…
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/10/billionaires-2009-richest-people-search.html?Name=walton&Age=0-99&NetWorth=1.0-70.0&City=&Source=

But after reading “The World is Flat” by Friedman and seeing how innovative it’s streamlining process completely changed the market, I started to question the instant hatred. The Walton’s have definitely been pioneers in how they do business. Just on Treehugger’s blog today was this article…
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/wal-mart-sustainability-index.php?dcitc=th_rss

This led me to go check out Walmart’s website which has a green living section with tips on reducing, reusing, and recycling, environmentally friendly products, and even a “save and live green” blog. There has been talk about how Walmart has been going green for a few years now, but apparently they now have set up a Green Job Council that is working on a greener supply chain and ideas like this “sustainability index”.

I don’t want to get caught up in the hype, but it sounds like finally a company is starting to take the right direction of demanding responsibility out of it’s producers. Of course this new green iniative has a dollar reward that comes along with it, but who cares what the intentions are as long as the effects are positive.

I was wondering how everyone else feels on the topic??