Big Box Campaign

The emergence of the Big Box Retailers has transformed our economy. Single companies now control huge shares of the marketplace. Wal-Mart is projected to control 50% of the market for all household staples within 10 years. It has over 60,000 suppliers. It, like other big box retailers, has achieved tremendous influence over suppliers by virtue of becoming their largest product distribution channel.

The impacts on our economy from the rapid expansion of the big box retail industry have affected how we consume, what we buy, and how products are sourced, manufactured, shipped, and sold. We have seen a major shift in our economic life by an industry that externalizes its costs broadly – onto communities in which it locates, onto workers in its stores and supplier factories, onto local economies that see small businesses and Main Streets collapse under its weight, and onto the environment and our livability.

As the largest of the big box retailers, Wal-Mart is leading a corporate “race to the bottom.” By using its massive buying power, Wal-Mart forces companies that supply it to cut their employees wages and benefits. Similarly Wal-Mart pressures local communities for preferences while allowing many of its employees to be forced onto publicly-funded healthcare programs. Its environmental impacts, through the siting, construction, and operations of its stores, and throughout its global supply chain, are massive.



In order to fundamentally change how this industry does business and address the tremendous costs put on communities, workers, taxpayers, small business, and the environment from its practices, Corporate Ethics International is working to unify diverse interest groups into a common effort to change how this industry does business.

Campaigns to change the Wal-Marts of the world help tell the larger story of how and why corporations have been granted tremendous powers, allowing them to impact our communities, our lives, and our livelihood. The resources throughout this website are offered to help us all understand how this industry, and corporations generally, have too much power and how this must change.