Last summer we lamented the price of gas. This year, however, there's at least one upside. Retail sales for June were up 0.6% - substantially better than the 0.4% anticipated – with the gas prices leading the charge. A slight tip in the brutalized auto manufacturer sector helped, as well. This was the largest retail sales increase in five months.

Gas stations benefited from the cost of fuel, adding a bit of pep to a beleaguered retail industry: sales were up 5% year over year, after doing the same in May. And, car dealers had their best month since January: the sales of cars and parts climbed 2.3%. Nonetheless, this corner of the retail world is still off 14.5% from last year. It may have helped last month, but we're still pretty far from a cure.

Welcome to the 78th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

This week, let's take a look at a major initiative by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) to cut down on the amount of plastic shopping bags it provides. Wal-Mart has made itself part of the "green" movement in recent years, from being the leader in sales of CFL-type lighting to natural-gas powered fleet vehicles to the sale of items made from recycled materials.

But still, it doles out tens of millions (that's a conservative estimate) of plastic bags every single month, most of which probably end up in landfills. In my area, plastic bags are not accepted as recycled even though there is the recycling mark on them. In some counties, only specific kinds of plastic are accepted for recycling. Thus, just making something recyclable does not mean it will be or can be. How should Wal-Mart assist in this effort? Read on.

This article over at CNN Money makes sense - quite a bit, actually. In addition to the huge black eyes Wal-Mart has seen in recent years from employee treatment fiascos to leaked company memos to accusations of man-handling local competitors - they could use some polish to their image.

In addition to this, WMT has languished as of late and sales have slipped and stalled all over the place. We all remember what the holiday 2004 fiasco was about - Wal-Mart refused to lower prices on many holiday items and even raised some prices - leading to some disastrous sales results. Not being one to let their stock price languish in the doldrums, the gist of this article is to bolster labor relations, expand internationally, manage its merchandise more effectively, and attract new customers. On those last two, it would be interesting to see how the world's arguably most advanced IT control system manages inventory any better, or how WMT will attract new customers - concept stores for yuppies could be a great start.