Walmart adjudged as largest on-site green power generator

Taking Steps to Sell More Sustainable Products

Committed to scaling the Sustainability Index and helped to launch TSC in China: Walmart began the work of launching and integrating the Sustainability Index, exceeding the goal to launch the Index with buyers and suppliers in 100 categories last year. Today, the Index is being used in 190 categories and we will continue to roll it out across other categories this year.

In October 2012, Walmart announced a series of new commitments to make our supply chain more sustainable. Among them was a commitment to, by 2017, buy 70 percent of the goods sold in U.S. Walmart and Sam’s Club locations from suppliers who use the Index to evaluate their products. Another commitment was to use the Index to influence the design of U.S. private-brand products beginning this year; and tying Walmart U.S. buyers’ evaluations to sustainability objectives.

The Walmart Foundation also provided a $2 million grant to help support the launch of The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) in China, to help provide training and develop partnerships that will build capacity for TSC’s tools to improve sustainability.

Met goals to source seafood sustainably in the U.S.: Walmart and Sam’s Club locations in the U.S. met their sustainable seafood goal requiring all fresh and frozen, farmed and wild seafood products sold to be certified as sustainable by a third-party or require uncertified fisheries to develop plans to achieve certification and report progress.

Moving Forward in Our Zero Waste Effort

Reduced global plastic shopping bag waste: In 2012, we exceeded our target to reduce our global plastic shopping bag waste by reducing bag waste globally by 38.1 percent, more than the targeted 33 percent, and did so ahead of schedule. In fact, in Brazil alone we reduced plastic bag consumption by more than 50 percent thanks to customer programs and support for reusable bags.

Optimizing packaging to meet our goals: Working with our suppliers, manufacturers and other key stakeholders, we recently met our goal to reduce packaging by 5 percent by 2013, months ahead of schedule.

By focusing on the GHG emissions that result from each unit of packaging we use, our suppliers have partnered with us to reduce the overall GHG impact of our packaging by an average of 9.8 percent in our Walmart U.S. stores, 9.1 percent in our Sam’s Clubs in the U.S. and 16 percent in our Walmart Canada stores.

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