Wal-Mart Indifferent to Suppliers' Illegal Logging Practices, Says Group

On Wednesday, the Environmental Investigation Agency released a report and video allegedly showing that Wal-Mart is selling wood products made from illegally logged timber in the Russian Far East. Logging this illegal timber is in turn threatening the habitat of the endangered Siberian or Amur tiger, of which there are thought to be no more than 510 remaining in the world.

These media are released as Wal-Mart is touting its "Sustainability 360" initiative, which asserts the importance of "first and foremost" avoiding illegally harvested wood.

The non-profit EIA asserts that Wal-Mart's "no questions asked" sourcing policy prizes low prices above all else and puts that consideration ahead of those about the environment.

China ranks Wal-Mart as its eighth-largest trading partner and produces 84 percent of Wal-Mart's wood products. China's manufacturing sector relies on large quantities of timber that it imports from the world's illegal logging hotspots -- including Russia's Far East, where Russian police are allegedly bribed to help move the timber. It is believed that between 35 and 50 percent of the logging done in those forests is illegal.

"Everybody in Russia from President Vladimir Putin down to local officials has openly acknowledged that much of the wood flowing from Russia to China is illegal. But Chinese manufacturers told EIA investigators again and again that Wal-Mart doesn't ask where the wood comes from, only if it's cheap...Cutting costs should not be an excuse for damaging the environment by accepting illegal wood or threatening endangered species -- especially not for the biggest company in the world," said Alexander von Bismarck, EIA's Executive Director.

In 2005, Wal-Mart Chief Executive Lee Scott entered the company into an environmental program in order to cut energy use and solid waste while selling more environmentally friendly products and getting its approximately 60,000 suppliers to do the same.

The world's largest retailer has said that using products made from sustainable wood sources is important to the continuation of its business as well as the sustaining of the environment.

World Wildlife Fund regional program director Dr. Darron Collins has told the press, "Logging and tigers can coexist. But illegal logging makes it harder on those who are trying to do it in a sustainable way."

According to groups such as EIA, in the global economy huge, multinational corporations like Wal-Mart try to get away with turning a blind eye toward illegal practices or injustices such as their suppliers running operations with mandatory overtime, low pay, and pitiful working conditions by claiming that they have no control over what their suppliers at the beginning of their supply chains who operate in far-flung corners of the world are doing.

However, the investigation comes at a time when studies show 94% of investors are now actively checking for the bottom line on companies' social responsibility as well as financial performance.

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