Whole Foods and Wal-Mart do battle on a green field

In recent years, low-price giant Wal- Mart, has stepped up efforts to become a more sustainable company. Whole Foods, the biggest organic and natural foods grocery chain in the US, is now struggling to provide the highest quality natural or organic product, from sustainable sources and remain competitive price-wise.

In 2005, Wal-Mart opened one of its first experimental "green" stores to evaluate energy- and waste-saving techniques such as installing solar panels and wind turbines and reusing old cooking and motor oil to help heat stores. Wal-Mart CEO, Leo Scott, has pledged publicly that one day the world's largest retailer will be powered completely by renewable energy and produce no waste. In addition, the retailer has asked its more than 60,000 suppliers to comply with a "sustainability scorecard."

Wal-Mart's environmental awakening has come with consequences for Whole Foods, which has had sustainable agriculture as a key mission since the company was founded 28 years ago. Wal-Mart is now the biggest purchaser of organic milk and cotton.

That's forced Whole Foods to differentiate itself in new ways of offering the highest-quality products possible, such as creating a Whole Trade certification, which is in addition to Fair Trade and Rainforest Alliance approvals, according to Michael Besancon, Southwest regional president for Whole Foods.

"There's no way in the world that we'd win a price battle with Wal-Mart," Besancon said. "I'm relatively smarter than that."