Bonita Springs YMCA Revamp Nearly Done

After a year of dormancy, the Bonita Springs YMCA is coming to life again. The Walmart Foundation gave a boost to fundraising efforts with a $100,000 donation. “We’re accepting all sorts of donations whether people want to sponsor a child for a single week of summer camp or if they’d like to support the Y for the long term,” said Mischa Kirby, South County Y marketing director.

Read more at the News-Press

Walmart Gives Special Needs Children “Day at the Beach”

McGruff spent time with the Special Needs children of Callaway Elementary School today, as Wal Mart Distribution Warehouse and Drivers sponsored their “Special Day”. Children on hand were treated to a pizza lunch, topped off with a cake designed using cupcakes! Afterwards, the day’s special guest, Madison Shipman was honored at her own private beach! All of the kids will receive a goody bag full of surprises from Walmart and school supplies and ID kits from the Troup County Sheriff’s Office.

Read more at WTVM-TV

Hanford Awaits Walmart Grant Money

It won’t be official until Walmart announces who will receive the $50,000 check on May 15, but anti-poverty advocates say they’re excited regardless of who will get it. “I’m hoping that they would consider our organization, but the bottom line is that we’re just happy that … someone somewhere is going to get this funding to fight hunger issues in Kings County,” said Jeff Garner, executive director of Kings Community Action Organization. Garner said KCAO was among organizations invited to apply for the funding. He doesn’t expect his organization to receive the whole lump sum. Most likely, the funding will be shared by a few organizations, he said.

Read more at the Hanford Sentinel

Salem to Receive $50,000 in Anti-Hunger Campaign

Salem has won $50,000 to be used for hunger relief in a national campaign led by Walmart. The Facebook campaign, “Fighting Hunger Together,” invited residents of 200 communities nationwide to vote and earn the funds. The top community, Youngstown-Warren, Ohio, won $1 million. The next 20, including Salem, won $50,000 each. Salem was ranked 16 with 4,758 votes. Salem is the only town in the Northwest to be selected. Seven from the list are in California

Read more at the Statesman Journal

Big Companies Hold the Key to Sustainable Commerce

The following is an op-ed by David Schatsky, principal of Green Research. The world’s largest companies hold the key to setting global commerce on an environmentally sustainable path. The top 500 companies in the world generate $23 trillion in annual revenue, more than a third of global GDP. If the world’s largest companies can achieve radical improvements in their environmental performance—slashing their negative impacts while finding new ways of thriving—the effect on our planet and our society will be profoundly positive. For years big buyers have used “supplier scorecards” to rate suppliers on a range of criteria. Increasingly, companies are using scorecards to assess and push for improvements in environmental performance. An early example is Walmart, which introduced a supplier packaging scorecard in 2006 with the goal of driving a modest reduction in the volume of packaging (5 percent over 5 years). In 2009, it announced a supplier sustainability assessment to expand the environmental performance measures on which it evaluated its suppliers. Procter & Gamble rolled out its own supplier sustainability score card in spring of 2010.

Read more at the Environmental Leader

Adam Werbach: Lifelong Sustainability Champion

Ahead of the sustainability 24 leadership debate, Adam Werbach discusses climate change, CEOs and the future of sustainability. In a classic tale of poacher-turned-gamekeeper, Werbach, who once described Walmart as “a new breed of toxin … that could wreak havoc on a town” was eventually won over by the strategy established by former CEO Lee Scott in 2005. But when Act Now started to work with Walmart in 2006, the world’s largest private company, environmentalists responded with such vitriol that he would only speak in public with security protection. Werbach countered his critics by arguing that enormous companies like Walmart can make a huge impact with tiny changes.

Read more at the Guardian

Walmart Announces Winners of Popular “Get on the Shelf” Contest

Get on the Shelf Winners

Walmart Announces Winners of Popular “Get on the Shelf” Contest

HumanKind Water is Grand Winner; PlateTopper and SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit Also Win

SAN BRUNO, Calif. – May 3, 2012 – Walmart (NYSE: WMT) today announced the final winners of its popular Get on the Shelf contest, HumanKind Water, PlateTopper and SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit. More than 4,000 inventors, entrepreneurs and small businesses from across the country entered the contest with video submissions for products ranging from household wares and children’s toys to organic food and green items. Over one million votes were cast by the public to vie for the opportunity to be carried at Walmart.com and in Walmart U.S. stores.

HumanKind Water, a bottled water company that gives 100 percent of its net profits towards clean drinking water for underdeveloped communities worldwide, was the Grand Prize winner. PlateTopper, a kitchen product that transforms dinner plates into airtight food storage containers, came in second. SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit, a screw kit to fix glasses in 30 seconds, was the third winner. All three products will be available on Walmart.com and HumanKind Water will also be on physical shelves in select Walmart U.S. stores soon.

“Get on the Shelf has brought out the best in American ingenuity and creativity with products that are clever, fun and useful,” said Joel Anderson, president and CEO of Walmart.com. “The three winners demonstrated a deep passion, incredible imagination, and sheer persistence in their journey. We congratulate them and are proud to carry their products at Walmart.”

HumanKind Water
HumanKind is on a mission to deliver clean filtered water to people in the world who need it the most. HumanKind, based in Philadelphia, reports that more than one billion people – one in seven across the globe– lack access to clean drinking water and half of all hospital beds in the world are filled with people dying from lack of clean water or sanitation. With the digging of wells, installation of filtration and chlorination systems and possible harvesting of rain, HumanKind believes the problem can be eradicated. For them, if every American purchased $10 worth of HumanKind Water a year – less than what most spend on Halloween candy – it could nearly eradicate one of the world’s largest and most tragic physical problems. HumanKind Water will be available soon on Walmart.com. In the meantime customers can sign up for an email alert to notify them when the product is available.

PlateTopper
PlateTopper, based in San Francisco, is the brainchild of Michael Tseng who first developed a prototype for the product in 2005 when he was studying at Princeton University. Michael then went on to complete his graduate studies in biomedical engineering and medicine while working on PlateTopper part-time. In the last year, Michael has spent all of his time perfecting PlateTopper to enable people to quickly and easily store food right on the dinner plate. The product is now available for sale at Walmart.com for $19.77.

SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit
SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit, out of East Wenatchee, Washington, is a patented screw kit that fixes sunglasses or eyeglasses in 30 seconds. Inventor Nancy Tedeschi created SnapIt when her mother used a dangling earring to hold her broken glasses together. After starting on a path to create eyeglass charms, Nancy wanted an easier way to screw together eyeglasses and reinvented the tiny screws that are hard to grasp. SnapIt’s design employs a feeder tab that guides the screws in place, and can easily be snapped off once the glasses are secured. SnapIt will be available soon on Walmart.com and customers can sign up for an email alert to notify them of the product’s availability.

Throughout the contest, the winning inventors went the distance to market their participation. Humankind Water transformed its homepage into a “war room” completely dedicated to getting votes. PlateTopper deployed humorous videos and social marketing tactics to raise visibility, including a YouTube video, which has been viewed more than two million times. Nancy of SnapIt even went to the NBC Today Show’s plaza in New York where her assistant dressed as a giant screw and was seen on national television with a sign asking for votes.

Get on the Shelf, a program from @WalmartLabs, launched in January of this year where contestants sent in videos of their latest inventions to be voted on by the public. In the first 24 hours of the contest voting, which began March 7, nearly 95 percent of the participants received a vote via Facebook or text. The top five product categories were home improvement, personalized products, health/wellness/fitness, fashion apparel/home and outdoor home. For more information, visit http://getontheshelf.com.

About Walmart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) serves customers and members more than 200 million times per week at over 9,700 retail units under 69 different banners in 28 countries. With fiscal year 2011 sales of $419 billion, Walmart employs 2.1 million associates worldwide. Walmart continues to be a leader in sustainability, corporate philanthropy and employment opportunity. Additional information about Walmart can be found by visiting http://walmartstores.com and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/walmart. Online merchandise sales are available at http://www.walmart.com and http://www.samsclub.com. @WalmartLabs, based in the heart of Silicon Valley, is Walmart’s business unit that creates platforms and products around social and mobile commerce. For more information, visit www.walmartlabs.com.

HumanKind

Snap It

PlateTopper

Infographic

Online Classes. Low Prices. Every Day.

When something sounds too good to be true, you check it out. So Jeana Murphy and Henry Jordan did some sleuthing when their employer, Walmart, offered to pick up part of the tab for degrees from an online university that offers flexible hours, relatively cheap tuition and college credit for on-the-job training and experience. Murphy, a 30-year-old assistant manager at a Walmart store in Elkin, N.C., started by Googling the American Public University System, the for-profit institution that two years ago landed a highly sought partnership as the preferred educational provider for the more than 1.3 million U.S. employees of Walmart Stores, Inc. Her wariness was due in part to having been burned before, when she attended an unaccredited for-profit college and earned credits that later didn’t transfer to Wilkes Community College. At first glimpse APUS looked legit, however. And Murphy was impressed with course offerings from the university, which enrolls 110,000 students in online programs, about 64 percent of whom are active-duty members of the U.S. military.

Read more at Insider Higher Ed

Amanda Fitch: Boulder Needs a Walmart to Drive Down Grocery Prices

Trader Joe’s is most welcome to Boulder. After the closure of Albertson’s and Lever’s, King Sooper’s is the only affordable supermarket in Boulder with a wide range of choices from down to Earth, to fancy. But their monopoly of the less than affluent shoppers also means that prices keep inching up. What Boulder really needs is a Walmart, but since the rich are too opposed to that let us at least have more affordable supermarkets, however small, so that King Sooper’s does not have a monopoly on the wallets of the middle income and poor.

Read more at the Daily Camera

Editorial: Walmart Isn’t Getting a Fair Shake

Sioux Falls has seen its share of “not in my neighborhood” campaigns over the years. Folks have tried to stop retail stores such as Ace Hardware at 41st and Sertoma, Walgreens at 26th and Minnesota, and even the eastside Walmart. Residents have opposed a memory care unit, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, adult entertainment businesses and an expansion of a car dealership. Sometimes efforts have successfully stopped projects. Often, they have encouraged frank discussions. But almost always, opposition has been based on fear of the unknown or stereotypes about people who would frequent the area.

Read more at the Argus Leader