Walmart supplier sustainability questions for suppliers

1. What do you think of Walmart’s green initiatives? Will it ever be able to achieve the reputation of being environmentally friendly? Discuss.

2. Why do you think suppliers might be reluctant to be involved in this initiative? How might that reluctance be addressed? Although it said supplier participation was not mandatory, does Walmart appear to be “forcing” suppliers to participate?

3. Why do you think it’s important for Walmart to collaborate with other green-minded organizations?

4. What could other organizations learn from Walmart’s green initiatives?

It’s probably the last company that you’d think of as going green. As the world’s largest retailer with more than 8,400 stores globally, Walmart moves massive amounts of products and uses massive amounts of power and other resources to operate its business. But it’s also striving to transform itself into a company that’s seen as environmentally friendly. That’s why the company’s announcement that it would cut some 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from its supply chain—the equivalent of removing more than 3.8 million cars from the road for a year—got widespread attention. This announcement came a few months after the company said that it would be creating a sustainability index of just how green its products are. The first part of Walmart’s three-phase plan was getting information from its more than 100,000 suppliers using a 15-question survey about their greenhouse gas emissions, water and solid waste reduction efforts, and other details about business practices. That information was received by October 2009, and the second-phase process of entering it into a massive database began. The third phase involves getting all that data eventually condensed into an easily understood universal rating system, similar to a nutrition label but focused on details about environmental and social sustainability. However, it’s likely that this effort won’t be complete until 2013.