What Makes a Retailer Green? Q&A With Greenopia

What are the nation's most environmentally friendly retailers? Sustainability advocacy group Greenopia aims to let you know with its recently released list of greenest (and not so green) retailers. Here are a few highlights: IKEA won in the department-store category, Whole Foods headed up grocers and Patagonia won in apparel. Read Greenopia's full list here.

The Santa Monica, Calif.-based organization based its retailer rankings on a number of criteria, including companies' individual sustainability reports, the ease of which goods sold can be recycled, how far products travel before they reach stores and environment-conscious building design. Doug Mazeffa, Greenopia's research director, recently spoke with BNET about the ratings and sustainability in the industry as a whole.

BNET: Are there any sectors of retail that, by nature, are greener than others?
There is a lot of variability. It can be building design, an electronics chain is going to use more energy, of course, than a clothing chain. One of the big differences we've found is with the environmental reporting. Some retailers are much better about reporting environmental information than others. But some are just greener than others. Clothing tends to be greener. It could be largely because it's pretty easy to substitute things like organic cotton or recycled and reclaimed materials into their supply chain. Whereas something like a Best Buy is really subject to Dell, Apple, Sony and whatever they can put, so they're a little more limited.

BNET: How do retail's sustainability efforts measure up to other business industries?
It's pretty much smack in the middle. It seems to be a pretty good indicator of what the common perception of green is or what's popular at the time. When organics kicked off in popularity, you started seeing stores like Wal-Mart and Target and Kmart and Safeway carrying a large variety of organic products. It's pretty close to what's popular on a consumer level. But electronics companies beyond retail, like Dell or Sony, tend to be a little more progressive. They've been reporting for a real long time and working with a different materials selection. Energy Star has, in part, pressured them into being a differentiator more than a big-box retailer. But having said that, there are some retail giants who are above and beyond the norm for the industry. Believe it or not, Wal-Mart scored really well. People alway associate green products with a higher cost, and Wal-Mart has found a way around this. They are actually collecting environmental data on their vendors and suppliers and are going to score them.

BNET: Are there any retailers you can think of that have made big strides lately?
The two that surprised me the most were Nike and Wal-Mart. That's not to say they're the greenest in their industry, they still have a long way to go. But for what they were 10 years ago versus what they are now, it's mind boggling.

BNET: What are some ways the industry as a whole could improve its green stature?
There are a number of ways. Stores like Best Buy have pledged that any new stores they building will be, at minimum, LEED certified. Making the buildings more efficient isn't always the largest chunk of the impact, but it's certainly significant. One thing that no stores have addressed yet -- and this is something that Wal-Mart's being targeted for -- is parking lots. Whenever they drain, there is a lot of runoff, and it can overpower water tables or processing plants. More importantly, if there is any spilled oil or gasoline, it can pollute local waterways. The biggest low-hanging fruit for retailers is the supply chain itself, as far as finding greener companies and transporting goods from minimal domestic sources. With grocery chains, it's a little bit silly to think that they're transporting produce 700 or 800 miles before it ends up on shelves.