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Wal-Mart Will Accelerate Green Retailing

July 16, 2009 •

Today’s Wall Street Jour­nal announced a mas­sive “green” ini­tia­tive by Wal-Mart that will even­tu­ally enable con­sumers to make informed choices about the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the prod­ucts and brands they’re think­ing about buy­ing. Because of Wal-Mart’s enor­mous clout with both sup­pli­ers and con­sumers, the impli­ca­tions of Wal-Mart’s announce­ment could be game chang­ing.

In the future Wal-Mart will require all of its sup­pli­ers to pro­vide  detailed infor­ma­tion about the envi­ron­men­tal costs, sus­tain­abil­ity mea­sures, and car­bon impact of what it takes to man­u­fac­ture and dis­trib­ute the prod­ucts that Wal-Mart stocks on its shelves. Wal-Mart wants con­sumers to be able to under­stand and com­pare the rel­a­tive sus­tain­abil­ity of foods and bev­er­ages, pack­aged goods, media and con­sumer elec­tron­ics, apparel —  for all SKUs that are stocked on the retail­er’s shelves. Wal-Mart intends that its green foot­print label­ing pro­gram apply to the sus­tain­abil­ity impact of con­sumer items through­out the life cycle of those goods — not just from raw mate­r­ial sourc­ing and man­u­fac­ture to point-of-sale.

It will take years for this “green label­ing” pro­gram to roll out in its entirety. Wal-Mart says it intends to enforce 100% com­pli­ance with this pro­gram on the part of its sup­pli­ers: if they don’t want to par­tic­i­pate, they’ll no longer be able to sell and dis­trib­ute their prod­ucts through Wal-Mart.

Because Wal-Mart accounts for almost 8% of all retail sales in Amer­ica, this ini­tia­tive will have a pro­found impact. Because sup­pli­ers will have to com­ply if they want to do busi­ness with Wal-Mart, the sec­ond-order ben­e­fits of com­pli­ance will spill over onto other retail­ers.

I think this ini­tia­tive is ter­rific, and hope that it leads to the fol­low­ing changes:

  • the emer­gence of a com­mon set of sus­tain­abil­ity stan­dards, label­ing and enforce­ment prac­tices — not just stan­dards spe­cific to Wal-Mart
  • adop­tion by all con­sumer-fac­ing retail­ers — both online and brick-and-mor­tar
  • pric­ing mech­a­nisms and buyer behav­ior that reward every­one in the sup­ply chain for being more envi­ron­men­tally respon­si­ble

On a related note I hope that expe­ri­ence design­ers and behav­ioral spe­cial­ists are involved in the design of all the sys­tems that com­mu­ni­cate these rat­ing sys­tems to con­sumers, to ensure they are mean­ing­ful and read­ily under­stood by con­sumers.

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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