Walmart Redeems By Going Green
Walmart hasn’t always been on everyone’s good side, but the conglomerate might be moving in the right direction by shifting toward sustainability. Eventhough there aren’t any stores in the city, Chicagoans might have noticed that the company has already changed its brand from “Everyday Low Prices” to “Save Money, Live Better.”
Its new five key initiatives include: sustainability, health and wellness, community, economic opportunity and value.
One blogger, Robert Johnson, writes the following:
Health and wellness kicked off with $4 prescriptions. In conjunction with its huge sustainability initiative, Wal-Mart recently held a conference in which it brought together CEOs from all over the country and announced that it was going to green its supply chain. That means if your company is a Wal-Mart vendor, or if you want to be one, first you must meet the company’s sustainability objectives.
That’s huge because Wal-Mart interacts with 80 percent of the households in the U.S. Anything Wal-Mart does affects most consumer brands and most manufacturers. For example, Wal-Mart now sells a reusable shopping bag for $1 that is made from 85 percent recyclable materials, carries the same weight as a plastic bag and replaces 50 plastic bags in its lifetime.
Six months ago Wal-Mart launched the “Live Better Index” to track its efforts.
The index charts the habits of American households in five major areas, including sustainability. At the six-month mark for the index, Wal-Mart reported that Americans had already purchased 100 million compact fluorescent light bulbs for a $1.5 billion savings on their electricity bills.
Why is this so important? Because Wal-Mart has already found that sustainability is not only cost effective, but it saves consumers money. And now they have decided that they are also going to save themselves and their supply chain money by extending their sustainability initiatives rather than drawing back from them.
We’ll see just how Walmart will sustain its new green approach.
November 09 2007 12:09 am | Green Trends
