Industry News: Wal-Mart to Require Sustainability Rating on Packaging
Wal-Mart has announced plans to develop an index that will be used to measure the sustainability of all products sold in its stores. A sustainability rating will be displayed on all product packaging, allowing consumers to easily evaluate a product’s eco-friendliness.
The initiative is expected to take a long time to develop. To start, Wal-Mart has mandated that its top-tier U.S. suppliers complete a survey by October 1. The survey will require suppliers to calculate the environmental costs of producing their products, as well as the environmental impact of a product during its lifetime. It includes 15 questions on topics such as energy use and greenhouse gas emissions during production, material efficiency and reducing waste, and use of natural resources. For a full list of questions, visit www.walmartstores.com/milestone.
The information will ultimately be gathered from all of Wal-Mart’s suppliers, with no exceptions, and will be used to create a sustainability index and, eventually, a ratings system. Wal-Mart will seek to create a ratings system that will be simple for customers to understand, and will provide customers with information so they can make more environmentally friendly purchasing decisions.
John Fleming, Wal-Mart’s chief merchandising officer, said, “I envision the day that you look at a piece of apparel, you flip a tag over, and learn about how sustainable it really is. It would be like nutritional labeling is today.”