Adam Werbach is no stranger to controversy. The environmental activist turned corporate sustainability adviser outraged fellow greens when he decided to work with Wal-Mart in 2006. Now he is turning on corporate responsibility directors whom he feels might not all be up to their posts.

Werbach took a risk when he started advising Wal-Mart on how to go green. “The truth is, Wal-Mart could’ve blown up,” he says, referring to how the retailer’s sustainability drive could have collapsed into greenwash.

Ten years earlier, a 23-year-old Werbach had become the youngest ever president of the Sierra Club, America’s oldest and largest environmental campaign organisation. Once he crossed over to Wal-Mart, however, former activist friends accused him of selling out.

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