Walmart's ecological footprint is changing

Individually, we can conserve and make better choices. But when our efforts are stacked up against big company processes, they can seem fruitless. One person can make a big difference not only at home...but at their employer. In fact, EVERY difference made at a company is started by one person.

I read recently how one Southern California woman got Walmart interested in organic cotton clothing -- and made an impact. Today I read that another individual has further impacted Walmart. This is inspiring. There is hope ... there are ways to make differences bigger than our own little household.

Big companies have a huge impact on our environmental sustainability. It's encouraging to see them change their way of doing business because it makes more sense. Walmart is one company that is seeing the benefits of working smarter.

Walmart is the biggest private user of electricity in the U.S.; each of its 2,074 supercenters uses an average of 1.5 million kilowatts annually, enough as a group to power all of Namibia.

Wal-Mart has the nation's second-largest fleet of trucks, and its vehicles travel a billion miles a year. If each customer who visited Wal-Mart in a week bought one long-lasting compact fluorescent (CF) light bulb, the company estimates, that would reduce electric bills by $3 billion, conserve 50 billion tons of coal, and keep one billion incandescent light bulbs out of landfills over the life of the bulb.

If Wal-Mart influenced the behavior of a fraction of its 1.8 million employees or the 176 million customers that shop there every week, the impact would be huge. And because of the extraordinary clout Wal-Mart wields with its 60,000 suppliers, it could make even more of a difference by influencing their practices.

To read an indepth article about how Walmart is changing, visit money.cnn.com