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How Walmart's green label aims to drive supplier 'race to the top'
February 25, 2015
How Walmart's green label aims to drive supplier 'race to the top'
Lauren Hepler
Wednesday, February 25, 2015 - 3:10am
What do Tide laundry detergent, a poster covered in adorable puppies wearing headphones and a baseball hat emblazoned with the cast of Duck Dynasty have in common?
One, they're all sold at Walmart. Two, the grab bag of products are all made by Walmart suppliers included in an initial batch of 150 companies that earned the right to be included in a new "sustainability leader" section of the mega-retailer's growing e-commerce operation. Those suppliers range from consumer products giants like Procter & Gamble and Unilever to smaller businesses like California-based Musco Family Olive Co.
The new online badging program, announced on Tuesday at a company Milestone Meeting held just south of San Francisco, is an outgrowth of the company's efforts to index supply chain sustainability standards across product categories. About 1,300 suppliers participated in Walmart supplier sustainability surveys last year, and about 12 percent of those companies have received the new sustainability leaders designation, Walmart Director of Product Sustainability Robert Kaplan told GreenBiz.
"What Walmart is very excited about today is using this tool to inspire a race to the top," Kaplan said. "This is about continuous improvement."
Products receiving the sustainability label aren't necessarily sustainable in and of themselves. Rather, the badges denote suppliers that are taking a broader view of sustainability by integrating organizational changes instead of product-by-product incremental improvements — a reflection of Walmart's own quest to drill down into the most meaningful information in the field.
"The Sustainability Leaders badge does not make representations about the environmental or social impact of an individual product," a Walmart document provided to GreenBiz notes, "only that the manufacturer has scored well enough to earn a badge across all of the products they make in that category."
Read more at GreenBiz.
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