David Suzuki has had a major environmental impact on many businesses of today. This past February, Wal-mart’s CEO Mario Pilozzi wanted David to come talk to his company. It was in Mississauga, ON that David gathered over 3500 managers, executives, and suppliers to conference about Wal-mart Canada’s lack of success. Many people were rather surprised with this choice, for they felt that there was no way to dig them out of the hole they were in. Luckily, David Suzuki on the other hand thought of the long term effects, which helped them to reinvent themselves.

          Wal-mart presented three goals to be achieved sometime in the future: making “environmentally preferable” products more available, using energy that is 100% renewable, and having zero waste. David discussed with them how to achieve their long-term goals, but also how to improve right now. Presently, Wal-mart has increased their recycling and told suppliers to decrease packaging. For every decision has a major impact either positively or negatively due to mass amounts of daily consumers. Recently, they changed almost 2 million light bulbs to 25-watt from 32-watt. This decrease is like taking 1700 cars off the road and also happens to save $5 million per year.

Often, environmentally good deeds and saving money go hand in hand. So David Suzuki helped Wal-mart start their road to both environmental and economic success. Since he is a good leader, he helped to inspire them to make the change to become more environmentally friendly. He then guided them through that process by helping them work towards their three goals. Now they are able to successfully continue what he started to achieve them. By taking on this project, he has environmentally improved the way that Wal-mart does business.

And, this didn’t only just benefit the business world. These positive changes that he assisted them to make will improve our society and educate everyone. There will be people who either buy (customer) or use (consumer) these products from Wal-mart. By supporting this company, or any other, they will be supporting environmental products. These items will use less packaging. They will also be more environmentally friendly by how their made or used. And other members of society will see these people making that environmental choice and will probably choose to follow. It will educate students who work there what environmental factors harm our stores and offices. And other students will find out how we can fix it. Students will learn about what they can do to improve the environment and their effect on it both positively and negatively. It will to train them to identify which businesses are being more environmentally friendly, and to inform others on what they have learned.

By investing in Wal-mart, he is investing himself into a project that will a have great long-term payoff. It is also one that affects not just those who work or shop there. David Suzuki has helped Wal-mart to become more environmentally friendly, and he has improved the business world. By doing so, he has now set an example for the community to follow. Finally, he will educate students about how the environment and business world can work together to improve our world.