Community | July 15, 2009 | 6 comments

Wal-Mart to Rate Products’ Impact on Environment

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/business/energy-environment/16walmart.html

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jefftego
Wal-Mart, which has been venturing into environmentally sustainable products and business methods for the last few years, is about to announce its most ambitious effort yet on that front. And it wants the nation’s other retailers to take part.

The company is expected on Thursday to announce the creation of an electronic indexing system meant eventually to help Wal-Mart and other retailers determine the social and environmental impact of every product they place on their shelves.

Wal-Mart’s enormity has long enabled it to create ripple effects throughout corporate America when it adopts new ways of doing business. Now it is spearheading the creation of a standardized electronic index that will determine how “sustainable” products are, based on their impact across the products’ life cycle. To make it happen, Wal-Mart is expected to ask its more than 100,000 suppliers to provide details about their supply chains. It will also team up with scholars, environmental and social groups, and other retailers.

In the short term, the sustainability index would be meant to give store buyers a system of measurements to help them decide which products to put on their shelves, so that determining which products are “greener” is no longer solely the consumer’s burden.

In the long term, the index will drive competition to create more sustainable products. Right now, there is no universal metric to help manufacturers make decisions based on what is best for the planet.

Wal-Mart has made strides in certain areas of sustainability, like recycling. But its biggest challenge has been measuring and changing the actual products on its shelves.
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6 comments // Wal-Mart to Rate Products’ Impact on Environment

  • GreenScreenCinema
    • 0
      GreenScreenCinema  

    • This is just an ass covering move. They won't actually provide any kind of green labeling for years. So they get all the press for saying they'll do this, and then they'll drag their feet until their mother makes them clean up their room. Their like a stoned teenager (in that regard).

    • 2 years ago
  • Incredulous
    • 0
      Incredulous  

    • Why doesn't Wal-Mart rate Wal-Mart's impact on the environment...and everything else?

      being green is nothing more than another avenue to increased profits for them

    • 2 years ago
  • CheneyBushWTF
  • bailey78
  • T_Rex_Behavior
  • unclecharlie
    • 0
      unclecharlie  

    • Who gives a flying f***? Why don't these lowlifes rate their products impacts on the lives of those poor Chinese who work in sweatshops making the crap WalMart sells. Since WalMart tries to buy American as little as possible, you can't go into Walmart and buy an American made blanket, comforter, bedsheets, towels, can opener, silverware, clothes, shirts, jeans, small appliances, fans, hardware, etc. etc. (All of which are still made here, but the profit would be much smaller) ) They don't give a damn about those who slave in sweatshops to make cheap plastic crap. Not to mention, THEIR impact on the enviroment- not just wiping out small town businesses, but trying to build next to Civil War battlefields and such.

    • 2 years ago
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