Wal-Mart is setting up an environmental ratings system for all of its products. The retailer’s suppliers will be required to detail the environmental costs of making their products. Wal-Mart will then turn that information into an index to help customers understand the sustainability of what they buy. The initiative could change the way consumer goods are produced and marketed around the world.
It might add cost and work to growers, shippers and suppliers of fresh produce, at least in the short term but what might sting in the short term could turn into a long-term benefit. “Everybody needs to be working in this direction, including in produce. It’s just going to take time in getting to the point they’re talking about.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced its plans July 16 during a meeting with 1,500 of its suppliers, associates and sustainability leaders at its home office in Bentonville, Ark., according to a release from the company. The index aims to establish a single source for sustainability information on all Wal-Mart products and those of other retailers.
The company plans to introduce the index in three stages. The first involves sending more than 100,000 of its suppliers around the world a 15-question survey asking about the suppliers’ energy and climate practices, material efficiency, sourcing of natural resources and ensuring responsibility and proper ethics with people and community. U.S. suppliers must complete and return the survey by Oct. 1 with timelines for suppliers outside the country to be determined.
Step two involves the creation of a consortium of universities that will collaborate with suppliers, retailers, government and nongovernment organizations to develop a global database of information on the lifecycle of products. According to the release, Wal-Mart has provided initial funding for the consortium.
The third step is to develop a tool whereby consumers can obtain and translate the information in the database about sustainability of products. Creating a set of standards for nearly every consumer product certainly is a big undertaking.
In addition to those long-term goals, the company has taken on a slew of more immediately actionable initiatives:
* Encouraging suppliers to drop polyvinyl chloride (PVC) packaging.
* Installing efficient LED lighting, eliminating 35 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually.
* Helping to educate consumers about compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs), selling hundreds of millions of them, and saving the equivalent output of several coal-fired power plants.
* Teaming up with BP and SunPower to put solar systems on the rooftops of stores in California and Hawaii.
