Check out this infographic about Walmart’s sustainability claims from Ethical Ocean:

via Ethical Ocean – eco friendly products, fair trade and vegan shopping.

This week, Walmart released its annual sustainability report. But as we’ve discussed before, Walmart’s quest for sustainability is more of a greenwashing PR campaign than an effective solution to the company’s environmental problems.

To help cut through the PR, Food and Water Watch and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance released a fact sheet this week, detailing ten ways Walmart is failing on sustainability.

1. Selling Shoddy Products
2. Reducing Waste According to Who?
3. Lagging on Renewable Energy
4. Increasing Greenhouse Gases
5. Voraciously Consuming Land
6. Financing Anti-Environment Candidates
7. Consolidating & Industrializing Food Production
8. Redefining Local
9. Degrading Organic
10. Spreading Poverty

The list highlights things we’ve talked about on this site and great research by Stacy Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self Reliance as well as Food and Water Watch’s own work on Walmart and the food system. To read more about Walmart’s failure on sustainability, you can find the full bulletin on the Top Ten Ways Walmart Fails on Sustainability here.

Last week, we wrote about Environmental Action and the Green Life’s Worst Greenwashers of 2011 contest. Well, the results are in, and with the help of your votes, Walmart came in third.

Walmart’s top three showing was the result of many of the reasons we’ve highlighted here. The contest organizers explain,

In the past three years, Walmart has embarked on a bold strategy for sustainability – or so their PR department would have you believe. From solar panels in parking lots to organic produce on (some) shelves, Walmart is touting their green initiatives. But it’s more of a public relations move than a deep change.

And Walmart is as unsustainable as ever. Their products push our entire culture toward cheap, throwaway production. Their stores undermine other businesses and increase driving and oil dependence. Worse still, Walmart spends big money on anti-environment political causes.

Head over to the Green Life to see a slide show featuring eight top greenwashers and read their “Don’t Be Fooled” report to learn more about all of them, including Walmart.

Our NCAA brackets may be busted, but there’s one winner we could pick without hesitation. Environmental Action and the Green Life are hosting the Worst Greenwashers of 2011 contest. There are eight “no so elite” companies in the running, and we know who we’ve got going all the way: Walmart.

Walmart has made a lot of green promises in recent years, but a closer look reveals that many of the goals have fallen by the wayside or were things the company was already doing. Sounds like greenwashing to us.

Here are six reasons to head over to the Worst Greenwashers of 2011 and vote for Walmart:

• Walmart’s sustainability goals “function like stealth marketing slogans,” as Stacy Mitchell points out at Grist. For example, in 2005, the company announced its goal was to be supplied by 100% renewable energy. It’s a nice goal that the media loves to repeat, but the company’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow, and seven years later, Walmart gets less than two percent of its energy from solar projects and wind power.
• The carbon footprint of Walmart’s stores, distribution centers, offices, corporate jets, and such was 21.4 million metric tons in 2010. That’s higher than half the word’s countries, explains Andy Kroll in a recent Mother Jones article. When you add in the company’s supply chain, Walmart’s carbon footprint grows almost tenfold, to 200 million metric tons.
• Two years ago, Walmart announced that it would sell $1 billion worth of produce from small and medium farms worldwide by the end of 2015. The company called it support for farmers and their communities, but it looks like it was more about saving on transportation costs. Worse, produce industry analyst Jim Prevor said that the company was trying to “get credit for doing what it’s already doing.” Walmart calls any produce sold in the same state as it’s produced “local.” Prevor again: “There’s a joke in the industry that if Walmart wants to increase local sales, all it has to do is open more stores in California.”
• In 2009, Walmart promised to develop a sustainability index to inform shoppers of the environmental impacts of every item on its shelves. Walmart set a five-year time table. Now, it looks like a consumer label “is really far off and maybe not a reality.” Another environmental idea that sounded good and lacks follow through.
• Walmart is by far the top container importer in the US. Why is this so important? In 2009, the Guardian reported on a study that found that one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50 million cars. Real sustainability means producing more goods locally.
• An energy efficiency consultant in China described it like this: “Walmart sets a new target, everybody gets all excited, runs around for six months, and then everything kind of slows down and the wheels fall off.”

Looks like a greenwashing champion.