Sunday, March 11, 2012

The Walmart Sustainability Movement

By: David Roberts

As currently one of the worlds biggest open market corporations it is hard not to notice what this power house is up to and the decisions going on in the board room. As the sustainability movement grows in demand it was clear that Walmart had to do something about it. The question is if we believe in their actions or believe their just blowing hot air to please environmentally friendly shoppers. As I looked more in depth into their sustainability campaign I started to notice how serous they take this topic and how they will know the effect it will have on their brand. The corporation has implemented a major global campaign that covers all aspects of sustainability towards their company and their environmental goals.

Walmart has noticed the demand from their customers for the desire for more efficient products and demand for knowledge towards the total product life cycle. As any good company does, they do what the customer desires. They created a 3 step sustainability index to help achieve this goal. http://walmartstores.com/sustainability/9292.aspx These three steps are; step 1, a supplier sustainability assessment, which provides more than 100,000 of their global suppliers a survey to evaluate how sustainable they are. Step 2, a lifecycle database; Walmart works with The Sustainability Consortium to collaborate with suppliers, retailers, NGO’s, and government officials to develop data tools that will enable research driven products sustainable measurements and reporting. Step 3 is an simple tool for customers; that will improve the sustainability performance of the produces our customers prefer. Our objective includes the development of merchant tools that will help our merchants understand and improve the sustainability of our products.

To make their efforts stretch even further they made a full global responsibility report that takes a look at all their environmental and social changes to further gain a sustainable brand. http://walmartstores.com/sites/ResponsibilityReport/2011/default.aspx Through those two subjects Walmart focuses on energy, waste, community and building a more sustainable supply chain.

Through these sustainability steps they may be able to build an effective and sustainable corporation for the world tomorrow. If Walmart is in on this major environmental trend who knows how many companies and corporations will jump further into it to help shape a better more sustainable environment for the world tomorrow.

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