Everywhere we look, Walmart seems to be leading some kind of sustainability initiative. In April, Walmart will host the 5th Annual Sustainable Packaging Expo in Bentonville, AR, and just last week, we had the Walmart Green Business Summit here in Vancouver with David Suzuki as keynote speaker. Yes, you read right – THE David Suzuki. The corporate giants can no longer ignore the realities of our environment if they want to sustain their business – they are opening their boardroom doors to the individuals who used to make their lives difficult. At the same time, it looks like activists are realizing that they can no longer shun the big box corporate world. Collaboration and transparency may just become the favorable recipe.
So what does such collaboration and transparency look like for Walmart? More specifically, what does it look like at the sustainable packaging side of things? For starters, Walmart has been executing on their sustainable packaging objectives by implementing an online packaging scorecard, running a yearly Sustainable Packaging Expo, actively working with private brand suppliers on sustainable packaging solutions, and exploring alternatives for PVC used in private brand packaging. All of this is quite well documented on their website with a dedicated section for packaging. The process surrounding exhibitors at the Sustainable Packaging Expo is particularly of interest and demonstrates some of their efforts to use collaboration to bring about more transparency and clarity in messaging form their suppliers.
For the 2010 Sustainable Packaging Expo, Walmart is working with Environmental Packaging Intl. (EPI) and GreenerPackage.com. According to a recent post on GreenerPackage.com, exploring the details of this collaboration, GreenerPackage.com will host the virtual component of the Sustainable Packaging Expo in an effort to sustain the relationships between packaging suppliers, product suppliers, and buyers beyond the duration of the April Expo. According to the post, any supplier who would like to be considered as exhibitor has to upload their product specifications to the Greener Package Product Database first.
EPI is taking on the audit component. As per the GreenerPackage.com interview with Walmart’s Ron Sasine and Sam’s Club’s Robert Parvis:
EPI is very well equipped to provide a level of review of environmental claims and substantiation that is helpful for us. We can then be assured that as our associates walk the floor, they are seeing claims and information that have been vetted and verified for accuracy.
Through Walmart’s efforts to collaborate with product and packaging suppliers, providing educational opportunities, working together to find solutions, and establishing third party audits and measurement tools, the sustainability messages from their packaging suppliers are becoming clearer and more focused, says Parvis.
So, what do we make of Walmart’s sustainability efforts and their work to bring about more collaboration and transparency? Do these efforts stem from a sincere concern for our natural environment or is it merely a competitive survival tactic? Or does it even matter if the direction is right and encourages others to follow suit?
Watch Walmart’s business case for Sustainable Packaging here:
Walmart: Sustainability 2.0 - Packaging - Clip
