In Canada, Walmart Has Over 300 Big Boxes – and Counting! The average Walmart Supercenter is mammoth, averaging 200,000 square feet and occupying 20 to 30 acres of land - about as large as a football stadium. There are over 300 Walmart big boxes in Canada -- and over 4,000 around the world! It is by far the largest retailer in the world, both physically and economically, and its stores require massive amounts of land, energy and labor to function.


Walmart’s Growth Will Offset Its Planned Energy Savings. Walmart’s new stores will use more energy that its energy-saving measures will save. Walmart hopes to cut 2.5 million metric tons of CO2 emissions by 2013, by making its existing stores 20 percent more efficient. New stores built in 2007 alone, however, will consume enough electricity to add approximately one million metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. At that rate, (adding one million metric tons of CO2 per year because of new stores), by 2013 Walmart will be offsetting its cut of 2.5 million metric tons of CO2 by adding 28 million metric tons of new emissions within the same time period [Stacey Mitchell. “Keep your eyes on the size: The impossibility of a green Walmart.” www.grist.org, March 28, 2007.]

Walmart Leaves Empty Buildings Behind. In the United States alone, Walmart has abandoned over 300 of its stores in order to build newer and larger Supercenters, all the while leaving empty concrete shells behind resulting in over 500 million square feet of unused retail space. [Erin Zeiss, “Walmart devastates the environment,” Eco-Mind, UVM Environmental Council, 1/23/07; http://www.southeastrebusiness.com/articles/JUN05/cover2.html]

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