This Week's Fortune Magazine

I just started flipping through the current (August 7, 2006) issue of Fortune. It's full of references to socially responsible business.

Starting with the cover story, "The Green Machine," an article about Wal-Mart. The subheading states that CEO Lee Scott wants to turn Wal-Mart into the greenest retailer. Scott admits that the green campaign started as PR, but it's more now. In fact, the idea of beginning these initiatives was brought to Scott by one of Sam Walton's sons, who was influenced after spending time outdoors with a conservationist who told Walton of the type of influence the retailer could have. The article talks of some of the initiatives and successes, such as one involving packaging. Wal-Mart sold a large bottle of Tide and a much smaller bottle of All - both promising to clean the same number of laundry loads. Wal-Mart got behind the smaller packaging of All. Now Proctor & Gamble is going to introduce smaller packaging for Tide and other products. Wal-Mart is trying to get all of their suppliers to use less packaging. The article also talks of how Wal-Mart is the largest buyer of organic cotton and a large buyer of organic foods. It mentions the new 'green' stores that have popped up, including one in a Denver suburb that uses wind turbines for energy, recycles cooking and motor oil to heat the store and has sustainable bamboo jewelry cases. It also composts spoiled food into fertilizer and resells it.

The Fortune issue also has a pull-out bookmark listing recommended books and websites on socially responsible business. There is a short interview with Klaus Kleinfeld, the CEO of Siemens, who says that Siemens is also "thinking green" while not publicizing it. He says Siemens sees it as not only "green" but as efficient.

The last mention is in an article about a Fortune-led conference called Brainstorm. Conference participant and venture capitalist Joen Doerr said, 'Developing new, sustainable sources of energy, "should be our generation's Apollo moon shot."' The conference also had Net pioneer Bill Gross, who now runs Energy Innovations, which 'produces a solar collector that uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight on silicon to generate electricity.'

The socially responsible business movement, if it can be called a movement, is coming along if a mainstream business magazine like Fortune has all of these mentions in on e issue. By the way, these mentions only took me to page 57 of the current issue. I still have half of the issue remaining. I'll be sure to report if any other mentions are made.