Wal-Mart Sets Up New Sustainability Index
Shopping giant, Wal-Mart, has announced this week that it will soon be coming up with a sustainability index for each and every product found in their store shelves, with the labels helping consumers determine if the product you are buying from their store meets not only the nutritional benefits, but the environmental benefits as well.
In other words, the index will work to track the life-cycle of the the product which consists mostly of food/groceries.
This plan apparently has been in place since about a year ago, but Wal-Mart, headed by its CEO, should be announcing the full details of it by Thursday before suppliers, investors and environmentalists.
The Big Money breaks down the story behind this plan.
The giant retailer ($406 billion in revenues in 2008) is developing an ambitious, comprehensive and fiendishly complex plan to measure the sustainability of every product it sells. Wal-Mart has been working quietly on what it calls a “sustainability index” for more than a year, and it will take another year or two for labels to appear on products. But the company’s grand plan—“audacious beyond words” is how one insider describes it—has the potential to transform retailing, by requiring manufacturers of consumer products to dig deep into their supply chains, measure their environmental impact and compete on those terms for favorable treatment from the world’s most powerful retailer.
Although Wal-Mart initiated this, the index will not be managed by the retail company itself and has faculty members from the University of Arkansas and Arizona State University work on the masterplan.
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