A few months ago there was a bit of a controversy about Wal-Mart’s proposed plan to buy and protect 312,000 acres of forest in Maine. Was it a legitimate effort to be a more socially responsible corporation, or just so much corporate greenwashing?

Here’s instance numero dos:

The world's largest retailer was scheduled to open a 206,000-square-foot building Wednesday that will include features such as a 120-foot tall wind turbine that will produce about 5 percent of the store's energy and a rainwater harvesting pond designed to provide 95 percent of the water needed for irrigation.

[...]

Wal-Mart wants some of the features in the store's design to one day be viewed as standard, including waterless urinals in customer bathrooms, saving about one gallon of water per usage; recycled cooking oil from the store's deli and engine oil from the auto center that will be used to help heat the building; and climate control measures and alternative refrigeration units that are projected to save enough electricity to power 135 single family homes for one year.

An analyst quoted near the end of the article points out that this is an unexpected step from a company traditionally focused on keeping expenses low, since none of these measures are cheap to implement, and any reduction in cost to Wal-Mart will be in the long run.

It’s unfortunate that Wal-Mart isn’t releasing cost figures for the project – a comparison of the construction cost and annual operating costs of this new facility and a traditional Wal-Mart store would tell us (1) just how much it’s costing Wal-Mart to improve their environmental reputation and (2) what the long-term cost-benefit calculus really looks like. In short, is this just another greenwashing effort, or is Wal-Mart really turning from the annual bottom line toward a more forward-looking approach to corporate management?