Vietnam: Mangrove loss and erosion

Tuoi Tre, Thanh Nien News 11 Jan 08;

Ca Mau, Vietnam's southernmost province, is being eaten by the sea and is shrinking by dozens of meters each year.

The province is bordered on three sides by the East Sea and Thailand Bay. Five years ago, you could enjoy the beautiful view as you walked along a coastal path.

The one-kilometer-long, four-meter-wide rock path, protected by a stable rock dike, was bordered by a dense forest of mangroves containing highland-style stilt houses where you could rest or hide from the sun.

But the dike and the path are now gone and the sea laps at the ladders of stilt houses.

The tourist resort's management board said the erosion started four years ago and had worsened during last year's rainy season, when the path and the dike sank into the sea.

“There is no particular statistics about the eroded area of the Ca Mau tourist resort,” said Pham Quoc Cuong, vice director of the Department of External Affairs and Tourism of Ca Mau Province.

“However, we have observed that there are many places where the sea has eaten into the land by up to six meters.”

The erosion is continuing day by day, hour by hour, with no signs of stopping.

When inspecting the site on New Year’s Day we saw giant waves breaking onto the land, sweeping the soil away piece by piece.

Witnessing the area being worn away, many tourists worry about Ca Mau Point’s future.

They are afraid that it will vanish if nothing is done to stop the erosion.

Who is the perpetrator?

There are many theories about the cause of the problem.

Dang Trung Tan, director of Mangrove Forest Research Center of Ca Mau Province said: “We have found black mangroves (Avicennia officinalis) here, which indicate that the area is suffering from natural erosion.”

This area has experienced both siltation and erosion, according to a research of the Forest Inventory and Planning Institute II of Ho Chi Minh City.

From 1965 to 1995 dozens of meters of silt was dumped around the Ca Mau Point, said another researcher at the institute.

But the silting process ceased about 13 years ago and without the extra soil being carried to the area, the mangroves are being consumed by the sea.

Cuong said the erosion was partly due to nature and partly due to human intervention, particularly the construction of the Ca Mau tourist resort.

He said the Department of Trade and Tourism of Ca Mau Province (the Trade Department currently) made a mistake when building a tourist walking path using soil from the sea floor.

“It is the deep ditch caused by digging that caused the dike and the path to be swallowed up,” Cuong said.

“Digging soil from around the Ca Mau Point coast to build tourism infrastructure is also the reason for erosion.

To make the point look like the prow of a boat, the department built a sea wall, putting the mangroves outside the ditch.

They were left exposed to the waves,” said an official of the Department of External Affairs and Tourism.

In 1999 the Trade Department built a VND1 billion (US$62,500) one-kilometer rock dike around the sea edge, according to the project management board of the Department of External Affairs and Tourism.

It was eroded within two years.

Recognizing the erosion had become serious, the department then made a temporary dike from coconut stakes and carved stones, costing VND1.4 billion ($87,500).

The second dike now is completely eroded too.

Solution?

“We are planning a VND14.2 billion ($888,300) project to build a dike to make the Sea East sea wall,” Cuong said, “The structure aims to urgently protect the remaining land.

The project has two parts: a dike for protecting against erosion will be constructed in one year; while it will take up to 10 years to create the sea wall.”

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Indonesia: Mangroves, shrimp farming and coastal erosion

Lampung sea erosion affects settlements
Oyos Saroso H.N., The Jakarta Post 11 Jan 08;

Lampung is home to 1.9 million hectares of mangrove, 60 percent of which may have been severely damaged.

Excessive mangrove logging in the last five years has caused extreme coastal erosion on a number of beaches in Lampung province.

A strip along West Lampung coast is growing narrower, especially at Biha Beach and Selaki Cape, where seawater intrudes into human settlements during high tides.

Head of Lampung University's Environmental Research Center (PPLH), Buchori Asyik, recently said an analysis has indicated severe coastal erosion stretching from Labuhan Maringgai in East Lampung and Bakauheni to South Lampung.

The analysis was conducted by the university, the East Lampung environmental agency and the Ministry of Environmental Affairs,.

Villages affected by erosion include Margasari, Sriminosari, Muara Gading Mas, Bandar Negeri, Karya Makmur, Karya Tani, Mulyosari and Kuala Sekampung, where 300 meters of coastline have been eaten away.

The erosion process occurs when huge waves slam into the beaches, especially when carried by easterly to Lampung's east coast.

Coastal erosion intensifies as mangrove swamps -- which should act as a coastal barrier -- disappear.

Mangroves have been excessively logged by residents for firewood, or converted into shrimp farms.

Former rice farmers are now growing shrimp ponds due to sea water intrusion.

A number of residents in Bandaragung village, Sragi district, South Lampung, acknowledged that ten years ago mangrove forests there reached three kilometers inland.

Over the past five years, they said, "newcomers" had cut back the mangroves, leaving the coast exposed to erosion.

The newcomers were from Tangerang (Banten), Indramayu, Cirebon (West Java) and Brebes (Central Java), they said. They often supported themselves through small-scale shrimp farming.

Director Mukri Friatna Lampung of the local chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) said reforestation efforts on the east coast had been only somewhat successful.

"Damage is also caused by the lack of initiative from the government in restoring mangroves in coastal areas. The central government has disbursed tens of billions of rupiah but restoration is carried out only through projects and doesn't involve local communities," said Mukri.

Many trees died because they weren't properly cared for or were removed, she said.

Mangrove areas which once extended up to 300 meters inland in Ketapang and Sragi, in South Lampung, and Pasir Sakti and Kuala Penet, in East Lampung, have almost disappeared.

Stumps are still visible in areas turned to shrimp farming.

Lampung Maritime and Fisheries Office data showed Lampung is home to 1.9 million hectares of mangrove, 60 percent of which may have been severely damaged.

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Indonesia: fighting dengue fever the natural way

Sanur residents fighting dengue fever the natural way
Prodita Sabarini, The Jakarta Post 11 Jan 08;

A village in the Sanur beach area in Bali has succeeded in promoting natural ways to prevent the spread of Dengue fever, through the cultivation of the Liligundi plant.

Liligundi (Vitex Trifolia) is a low creeping plant, less than 5 m in tall, with stems covered in soft hairs. It has small spikes of lavender-colored flowers and gray-green silvery leaves. Its distinct odor which emanates from its branches and leaves can be used to deter mosquitoes -- carriers of the Dengue fever virus.

After three years cultivating the plant in the area, Sanur Kauh village in South Denpasar, has seen positive results with very few reports of the disease recorded since the program started.

Sanur Kauh village leader I Made Dana said he was confident that only a small number of people would contract Dengue fever in his area this year.

"The number of Dengue cases has dropped significantly after we promoted planting Liligundi in our neighborhood," he said.

In 2005 the number of dengue fever cases in Sanur Kauh reached 25 per month, he said.

"Now, the number has dropped to less than five per month," he said.

The village had come a long way in preventing dengue fever in the area, Dana said. During the rainy season in 2005, Sanur Kauh area was classified as in state of extraordinary occurrence (KLB), due to the high number of dengue fever cases reported at that time.

Female mosquitoes lay their eggs in clear water, consequently the rainy season facilitates the spread of the disease due to the increased area of suitable breeding habitat.

"Denpasar Mayor AA Puspayoga at that time called for action to fight dengue fever," Dana said.

"I responded by cultivating Liligundi in my area."

He ordered Liligundi to be planted in unused land and green areas in the village.

Now one can easily spot Liligundi shrubs next to the roadside when passing through Sanur Kauh.

Dana called on all households to plant Liligundi in their gardens and set up the Darma Sedana Group to develop incense from the leaves of the plant to be used as mosquito repellent.

Products from the group have also been sold in Surabaya and Jakarta. The home industry started up with a small investment of Rp 6 million, but has now developed into a prospective business.

He said the local residents had been happy to grow Liligundi in their gardens because it was useful and economical.

"They don't need to buy spray-repellents or lotions," he said.

"You can pick three or four branches from the tree and slap the bed or table to bring out its odor, and mosquitoes will stay away from that area," he said.

"You can also burn incense made of Liligundi branches," he said.

Dana said that the good thing about the plant was that it does not kill mosquitoes but just made them go away.

"So, we're not killing any creatures," he said.

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Best of our wild blogs: 11 Jan 08

A campaign for a better world!
"Things You Can Do": a massive social campaign entirely initiated by youth for youth on the eco-singapore website

[minus]plastic blog
celebrities take the 7-day challenge to use plastic responsibly. [minus]plastic web resources will be launched tomorrow 12 Jan (Sat) more details

Chek Jawa after deferment of reclamation
some personal stories on the singapore celebrates the sea blog

White-breasted Woodswallow mating
on the bird ecology blog

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Harvesting Rainwater by Not Letting It Go to Waste

NPR 10 Jan 08;

Big rains slammed the West this week — big news in a region that has gotten used to dry weather.

Now some city governments are looking to rain to ease their water woes.

Thousands of years old, the concept is catching on in drought-prone areas, including Tucson, Ariz., where Brad Lancaster lives. He's the author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond.

As Lancaster explains, harvesting rainwater means to "capture the rain as close as possible to where it falls, and then to use it as close as possible to where it falls."

The easiest method is to use the soil to capture the rainwater. "You create these bowl-like shapes in the landscape that collect water. You mulch the surface and plant them so the water quickly infiltrates, and then the plants become your living pumps."

"So you then utilize that water in the form of a peach, a pomegranate, an apple, wildlife habitat and beauty," Lancaster tells Renee Montagne.

A second, better-known version of rainwater harvesting is collecting rainwater from a roof in a tank, or a cistern.

The third example is harvesting wastewater, also known as graywater, from household drains, including showers, bathtubs, bathroom sinks and washing machines. (Other drains — such as the toilet, kitchen sink and dishwasher — are high in organic mater, such as food or bacteria, and are not suitable for reuse.)

Household wastewater is "an excellent source of rainwater that we can reuse to passively irrigate our landscapes in times of no rain," Lancaster says.

Lancaster says that 30 percent to 50 percent of potable water consumed by the average single-family home is used for landscaping. But nearly all of the irrigation water needs can be met just with rainwater and graywater, he says.

Rainwater harvesting can be useful even in areas that are not affected by drought, helping reduce flooding downstream, for example, Lancaster says.

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Threat to African wildlife could upset delicate ecosystem balance: study

Yahoo News 11 Jan 08;

The pressures on elephants, giraffes and other big mammals could have far-reaching effects on the ecosystem of the sub-Saharan savannah, including disrupting the relationship between acacia trees and insects, researchers said Thursday.

In an experiment that simulated the extinction of these animals, researchers fenced off patches of land with the umbrella-shaped whistling thorn tree, or Acacia drepanolobium, on the Kenyan savannah in eastern Africa so that the animals could not graze on them.

Over time, they found that the absence of these plant-eating animals upset the relationship between the tree and its ant parasites, ultimately compromising the health of the tree, and increasing tree mortality by half.

"Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, these large mammals are threatened by human population growth, habitat fragmentation, over-hunting and other degradation, so we have to wonder how their loss will affect these ecosystems," said Todd Palmer, the paper's lead author and an assistant professor of zoology at the University of Florida.

"The last thing you would think is that individual trees would start to suffer as well, and yet that's exactly what we see."

Acacia trees have swollen thorns that serve as nests for three species of biting ants. Healthy trees have hundreds of thorns, often containing more than 100,000 ants per tree.

It's a mutually beneficial relationship for the insects and the tree that probably evolved over millennia. The ants get shelter and they feed on the nectar from Acacia leaves.

The ants swarm over anything that threatens the tree, protecting it from the plant-eating animals that feed voraciously on it.

However, after a decade in an enclosure, the acacia trees in the experiment appeared to have adapted to their new environment. They had fewer swollen thorns, secreted less nectar and the thorns needed to repel predators were shorter.

But, unexpectedly, the trees also looked sickly compared to their unfenced counterparts. The fenced trees were twice as likely to die as the unfenced ones, and they grew 65 percent more slowly.

On closer inspection, the researchers found that the tree's "adaptations" appeared to have changed the balance of power between the tree's three resident ant species, which in turn left the tree more vulnerable to the ravages of a destructive, wood-boring beetle.

With less shelter and food, the formerly dominant ant species (Crematogaster mimosae) was weakened and eventually overrun by another ant species (Crematogaster sjostedti).

The former underdog parasite encourages the wood-boring beetle and uses cavities made by it as its home, so ultimately the changes in the ant pecking order proved detrimental to the health and viability of the tree, the paper said.

"You get a community-wide replacement of good ants with bad ants and the result is that the trees start doing poorly," said Palmer.

The findings underscore the complexities of ecosystems and illustrate how man-made changes to animal habitats could result in unexpected trickle-down effects, the researchers said in the paper published in the journal Science.

"If you get rid of the large mammal, it shifts the balance of power, because the trees default on their end of the bargain. When the trees opt out, their hard-working employees starve and grow weak, which causes them to lose out. So ironically, getting rid of the mammals causes individual trees to grow more slowly and die younger."

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Global banking giants pulled up for flashing a paler shade of green

Report says they haven't done enough to address climate change challenge
Chew Xiang, Business Times 11 Jan 08;

(SINGAPORE) The name and shame game continues apace. Banks are the latest target as environmental groups try to chivvy the corporate world into doing more by detailing their green (or not so green) practices.

And the banking sector still has a long way to go, according to a report released yesterday by Ceres, a US-based coalition of investors and environmental groups.

Its president, Mindy Lubber, said: 'More banks realise that climate change is a big business issue, but their responses so far are the tip of the iceberg of what is needed to tackle this colossal global challenge.'

The report surveyed 40 of the world's largest banks and financial institutions, including five from Asia and one from South America. The banks included HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Mitsubishi UFJ, Bank of China and Banco do Brasil.

The asset managers included BlackRock Inc, Franklin Resources and State Street Corp.

On the positive side, the report found that banks collectively produced nearly 100 research reports on the topic, more than half released within the last year.

Twenty-eight calculated their greenhouse gas emissions from their operations and all but four of these have committed to a reduction target.

Twenty-nine also reported their financial support of alternative energy projects and companies.

However, just 12 banks have board-level involvement in climate change policy and only six formally include calculations of carbon risk in their loan portfolios.

Carbon risk measures the potential cost to investors of carbon emissions by a firm, including the cost of purchasing emissions permits - for example, under the European Union Emission Trading Scheme.

The banks were given a score based on their performance in director oversight, management performance, public disclosures, greenhouse gas emissions accounting and strategic planning.

The highest scorers based on Ceres's scale were all European banks: HSBC, ABN Amro, Barclays, HBOS and Deutsche Bank made up the top five.

Citigroup and Bank of America were the top US banks, coming in sixth and seventh, while Mitsubishi UFJ and Sumitomo Mitsui were the best Asian banks, although both ranked in the middle overall.

Bear Stearns came in last, with a score of zero. It did not publicly address climate change at all as a policy issue and did not respond to requests from Ceres to comment, according to the report.

Bank of China and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China finished in the bottom 10.

The report analysed the banks using securities filings, company reports and questionnaires. The scores were weighted as not all banks (especially investment banks and asset managers) had products or activities assessed in Ceres's scheme.

The report recommended that banks make climate change a boardroom-level priority, provide better disclosure about the financial and material risks of climate change, and set progressively higher targets to reduce the emissions impact of their lending and investment portfolios.

Ranking is a common tactic to encourage companies to go green. Greenpeace, for example, ranks electronics manufacturers according to their recycling and toxic content policies.

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UK stops Malaysian palm oil ad after complaint

Business Times 11 Jan 08;

Environmentalists protest that impact of using palm oil as biofuel is unproven

(LONDON) Britain's advertising watchdog on Wednesday ordered British television to stop airing two commercials suggesting palm oil production in Malaysia is good for the environment, calling them misleading.

The independent Advertising Standards Authority accepted complaints by environmentalists that the net impact of using palm oil as a biofuel is still unproven, and that the Malaysia Palm Oil Council's commercials could mislead viewers to think palm oil plantations are as environmentally friendly as natural rain forests.

The ruling was the latest skirmish in the global warming debate on the benefits of palm oil as a substitute for fossil fuels. The arguments before the authority covered a broad range of issues by both sides.

The dispute tested claims by Malaysia and Indonesia, the world's largest producers, that palm oil plantations have a minimum impact on biodiversity and that they are more efficient than other types of agriculture in controlling climate change by soaking up carbon from the air and by producing cleaner fuels.

'Because there was not a consensus that there was a net benefit to the environment from Malaysia's palm oil plantations, we concluded the ads were misleading,' the watchdog said.

The two ads were shown in July on BBC World, the British Broadcasting Corp's international news and information channel.

One commercial showed a palm oil plantation while a voice-over said: 'Its trees give life and help our planet breathe, and give home to hundreds of species of flora and fauna.' The second ad's voice-over said: 'Its trees give life and help our planet breathe. Its fruit provides vitamins for our bodies and energy for our daily lives.' Malaysia argued before the board that new palm oil plantations have not displaced rain forests since 1990, and instead were planted on converted rubber, cocoa and coconut plantations.

That was challenged by Friends of the Earth, which filed one of the complaints. It said huge tracts of forests had been cleared in Malaysia between 1995 and 2000 for palm oil development, further threatening endangered species such as the orangutan and proboscis monkey.

'The draining and deforesting of peatlands in South-east Asia, predominantly to make way for palm plantations, releases huge amounts of soil carbon into the atmosphere, accounting for a massive 8 per cent of global annual CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions,' the group said in a statement. -- AP

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Australia plans to phase out plastic bags

Straits Times 11 Jan 08;
Canberra wants supermarkets to begin ending their use this year

SYDNEY - AUSTRALIA has followed China in announcing that it plans to end plastic bag use in supermarkets, with its new environment minister saying yesterday that he wants a phase-out to start by the end of the year.

'There are some four billion of these plastic bags floating around the place, getting into landfill, ending up affecting our wildlife and showing up on our beaches while we are on holidays,' Environment Minister Peter Garrett told local media yesterday.

China launched a crackdown on plastic bags on Tuesday, banning the production of ultra-thin bags - which are less durable and often require shop items to be double-bagged - and forbidding their use in supermarkets and shops from June 1.

'We should encourage people to return to carrying cloth bags, using baskets for their vegetables,' China's State Council said in a notice on the government's website.

Besides being an eyesore, plastic bags cause numerous problems, say environmental groups:

# They are made from a non-renewable natural resource - oil.

# They take up to 1,000 years to degrade.

# They cause harm to wildlife and livestock.

Turtles often mistake bags for jellyfish, while livestock can end up eating them and choking to death, say environmentalists.

In some countries, plastic bags can block sewers and drains, triggering rampant disease.

The Chinese use up to three billion plastic bags a day, and China has to refine five million tonnes - or 37 million barrels - of crude oil every year to make the plastics used for packaging, according to a report on the website of China Trade News.

Other countries such as Ireland, Uganda and South Africa have experimented with heavy taxes, outright bans or eliminating the thinnest plastic bags, while towns and cities have taken unilateral action to outlaw plastic bags.

In the US, the cities of San Francisco and Oakland in California have banned the bags, while legislation passed by the city council in New York on Wednesday means that large stores throughout the city must now provide bins for recycling them.

Environmentalists estimate that Americans throw away 100 billion plastic bags each year.

In Singapore, a whopping 2.5 billion plastic bags are used each year. Dumping them in the trash leads to them being incinerated, which releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and contributes to global warming.

Bangladesh banned plastic bags four years ago when officials realised they blocked drains and led to flooding. Since then, shoppers have taken to using bags made of jute or cloth.

Mr Garrett said that he will meet with the leaders of Australia's six states and two territories in April to discuss the phasing-out of plastic bags.

'We've certainly had a system in place that's been voluntary up to now, where you've got people coming into the supermarkets and they have the opportunity to take up those canvas bags,' said Mr Garrett, whose centre-left Labor Party came to power in November.

But it is unclear how Australia will rid itself of plastic bags - whether it will issue an outright ban, like China, or impose a levy, like Ireland.

Mr Garrett said he was not personally in favour of a levy as it punishes shoppers.

Clean Up Australia chairman Ian Kiernan said: 'It has always been the policy of Labor to look at a total ban in 2008, and that is what minister Garrett is doing and we totally support that.

'But we are not in favour of a levy.

'We know that, with the Irish example, there was a dramatic reduction in the acceptance of plastic bags with the levy, but that started to creep back and it has not proved to be effective in the long term.'

REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Shopping without plastic: What others are doing
Straits Times 11 Jan 08;

# AFRICA

Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania's Zanzibar Islands have all banned flimsy plastic bags by introducing minimum thickness requirements.

Many independent supermarkets in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi charge a small fee for each plastic bag, and give away a free reusable basket with a minimum purchase.

# BRITAIN

British towns and stores decide for themselves how they use plastic bags. Some shopkeepers got rid of plastic bags altogether, while some big grocery chains now offer customers incentives to reuse old bags.

# CANADA

Leaf Rapids, Manitoba - a town of just 550 people - in April last year became the first municipality in North America to ban the use of plastic bags by shops. Those who flout the rule can be fined up to C$1,000 (S$1,420). Shoppers now use either paper or cloth bags.

# GERMANY

Most stores provide plastic bags and canvas or cotton totes - for a fee. The price of a plastic bag ranges from 5 euro cents (10 Singapore cents) to 50 euro cents, while canvas or cloth bags cost under a euro.

Many Germans carry their own bags when they shop. Some even use wicker baskets or wheeled carts.

# IRELAND

A 15 euro cent levy on every plastic shopping bag was introduced in 2003.

The use of plastic bags has dropped sharply as stores switched to paper bags or stopped handing out bags completely.

The fee was raised to 22 euro cents last July.

# SINGAPORE

Singapore launched the Bring Your Own Bag Day campaign in April last year to encourage shoppers to cut back on the use of plastic bags. It is now held on the first Wednesday of every month and involves 200 retailers.

To mark World Environment Day last year, more than 100,000 reusable bags were handed out to shoppers for free.

# UNITED STATES

San Francisco was the first US city to ban plastic grocery bags, and several smaller California communities followed suit. But stores can still use biodegradable plastic bags.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

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New York: Council Votes to Mandate Plastic Bag Recycling

PlanetArk 11 Jan 08;

NEW YORK - In a bid to curb the environmental impact of nearly 1 billion plastic bags used by New York City consumers annually, the city's council passed a bill on Wednesday requiring large stores to set up recycling programs.

The bill, which will likely be approved by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, also requires stores that occupy at least 5,000 square feet (465 sq metres) to make recycled bags available and to use bags printed with a pro-recycling message.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said costs to businesses would be "insignificant" in part because stores can sell bags to recycling businesses, which pay as much as US$100 per ton of plastic bags, and turn them into new products like plastic furniture.

Environmentalists have targeted plastic bags as a scourge that take years to biodegrade and contaminate soil and water.

In March, San Francisco became the first US city to ban non-biodegradable plastic bags from large supermarkets and the state of California enacted a law in July that requires large stores to take back plastic bags and encourage their reuse.

(Reporting by Edith Honan, editing by Michelle Nichols and Eric Beech)

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Wal-Mart faces hurdles in green electronics

Nicole Maestri, Reuters 10 Jan 08;

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - A campaign to reduce packaging has been a success for Wal-Mart Stores "green" campaign, but a move toward environmentally friendly electronics is proving that changing the mechanics of a TV is much more complex than changing the mechanics of a cereal box.

Manufacturers that sell goods in Wal-Mart's stores have responded quickly to the company's request to cut packaging waste, slashing the size of cereal boxes or bulking up toilet paper rolls to eliminate the need for extra cardboard centers.

This year, Wal-Mart wants electronics makers to fill out scorecards that will rate their products on areas like energy use, durability and ease of recycling. Wal-Mart will use the scores to help decide which products to stock on its shelves.

But the foray into "green" electronics is proving to be more complicated than its foray into "green" packaging.

Also, there are no uniform U.S. 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.

THE GREENING OF WAL-MART

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.

Wal-Mart said it will save $3.4 billion by reducing packaging 5 percent by 2013, and CEO Lee Scott bristles at the notion that being green clashes with low-cost business.

"Even if you're against the idea that climate change is important, why in God's name would you be against saving money?" Scott said at the company's annual meeting.

"It's taking out cost," he added "...We're not doing things that are silly."

Indeed these goals are no laughing matter for Wal-Mart suppliers, who know that producing poor scorecard ratings could mean losing space on the retailer's shelves.

"When they move to make it (the scorecard) a buying criterion, it will become a very powerful force," said Theo Schoenmakers, head of sustainability for Philips Consumer Lifestyle, at CES.

TACKLING GREEN

Suppliers are facing issues engineering green electronics.

"The thing that they're going to have the most difficult time with is a lot of the raw materials," O'Connor said.

For instance, Seong Ohm, head of technology for Wal-Mart's Sam's Club warehouse division, said it is looking for a way to recycle the glass panels in flat-panel TVs.

"We're talking to Corning, who makes the glass panels, and saying what can you do to recycle those?"

But finding methods to recycle the millions of phones, TVs and computers sold at Wal-Mart presents another challenge.

Some vendors, like Hewlett-Packard and Dell, have their own recycling efforts, but it would become a logistical nightmare if each of Wal-Mart's suppliers had separate programs. It has almost 61,000 U.S. suppliers.

Ohm said Wal-Mart needs to figure "how do we make this more inclusive so that we don't have to have one-off programs."

WHO PAYS FOR THE GREENING?

While Wal-Mart may push these changes there is little chance it would want to charge a premium for green goods.

That puts manufactures in a bind because building these electronics costs more, said Accenture Global Managing Director Allen Delattre.

"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 consumes less energy.

That was the tactic Wal-Mart took to promote energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs. Wal-Mart is considering a labeling program that would outline to shoppers how green electronics would spell long-term savings.

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 U.S. 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."

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