Wal-Mart's tag-line and purpose is: "Save Money. Live Better." Their commercials paint a picture of happy employees and little bouncy, bright smiley faces alongside thrilled customers. However, the public has been made painstakingly aware of their poor business practices over the recent years. They employ cheap sweatshop labor, have weak environmental standards - and for those of you who have seen: "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" know that they treat their employees and community members in a manner that has been anything but kosher.

This past July, Wal-Mart announced that they were creating a sustainability index that surveys their 100,000+ suppliers world-wide, which rates each product's sustainability on 4 different levels. They aim to reduce packaging by 5% by the year 2013. Their sustainability index is a follow-up to their package scorecard released in 2006, which was created to assist buyers in making an informed purchase with regard to product packaging.

At first glance, this seems so oxymoronic! Here's a company whose entire business model is dominated by negligence and a lack of concern for consequences - a company who sells HUGE amounts of low-cost items shipped from ALL over the world in GIANT energy-sucking stores, trying to convince us of their green agenda.

Well, let's take a deeper look at this. With $400 Billion in sales (for the 2009 fiscal year), greening their supply chain could make an enormous difference for the planet.