Posts in 'Walmart'

Archimedes said "Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the earth," when explaining the principle of levers.

Leverage is the big news about Walmart’s announcement today. The company has committed to reducing 20 million metric tons of carbon pollution from its products’ lifecycle and supply chain over the next five years. That’s equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 3.8 million cars.

So is Walmart moving the earth? No, not yet. But this is precisely the kind of innovative approach to reducing carbon pollution that we need right now. Environmental Defense Fund worked closely with Walmart to craft this goal and project that makes the most of what Walmart can uniquely do to cut carbon pollution across the globe.

This commitment is bold because: Read more »

As many of you know, we have been working with Walmart for the past several years to measurably reduce its environmental impact in the areas of global warming, packaging, plastic bag waste, agriculture, toxic materials while leveraging the power of its supply chain here and in China. Read more »

Environmental Defense Fund started this blog in February, just after launching the Innovation Exchange website, as an experiment to help us leverage and multiply the ideas and success of the Corporate Partnerships Program, of EDF and of the many innovators around the world working on business sustainability.  We began with a focus on what we have to offer from our 20 years of working with business and have continued to grow these resources while also finding new ways to support the network of innovators – or "do'ers" – who are ultimately making the difference in companies.

This year, we’ve had 140 posts on a variety of topics, including what our

Climate Corps MBA fellows have learned about energy efficiency, highlights from our work in the Private Equity and fleet vehicle industries, exploring what innovation means and showcasing innovative practices at a variety of companies.

Some of this year’s top posts foreshadowed trends on which we’ll be building in 2010:

• You Set the Agenda: Green Innovation for Business Unconferences introduced the series of events affectionately known as GIBUs through which we brought together some 450 business, government and non-profit professionals to discuss what they are doing and thinking about to improve and accelerate sustainability in business.  In 2010, we’ll be expanding the program and changing the name to better reflect the results that the events are intended to produce: solutions.  Read more »

Bestselling non-fiction author Jared Diamond wrote a compelling piece in Sunday's New York Times about the pivotal role that big business can play in helping solve our global environmental challenges. Mentioning the promising work of corporate giants like Walmart (also a partner of EDF), Diamond outlines how businesses that embrace environmental innovation can cut costs, create new markets and markedly improve their reputation.

This all rings true and is core to our work with business here at EDF – with one clarifying point. While market leaders like Walmart can set the stage for industry-wide transformation, environmental innovation comes in all shapes and sizes — from start-up companies to Fortune 100s and everything in between. Read more »

In May, with very little fanfare, Walmart introduced an extraordinary new tool known as GreenWERCS. GreenWERCS assesses the composition of chemical intensive products – which is just about any non-food item on a Walmart shelf that you can pour, squeeze, dab or otherwise apply to your body or use in or around your home or car. GreenWERCS analyzes the composition of individual products from ingredient data entered by manufacturers, examining its potential impact on human health and the environment. Read more »

Here at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), we look for market based solutions to environmental problems. As the guy in charge of managing our partnership pipeline process, I’m constantly on the lookout for new win-win environmental and business solutions we can pioneer with companies. I’m often asked how we identify the companies that we partner with. And increasingly the word I use is LEVERAGE.

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Fresh out of Wal-Mart’s quarterly “Sustainability Milestone Meeting,” where the company announced its intention to create and support a Sustainability Index to measure and rate the environmental attributes of products, I’m left with a lot of questions – and also a lot of hope for the future.

I won’t attempt to recap the discussions already swirling around the blogosphere about whether or not this effort is real (Joel Makower’s blog does a pretty good job of summing up the issues). Instead, I’ll give a sample of what I heard today and why we need to help ensure its success.

Amidst the normal hullabaloo of a Wal-Mart event – part business meeting, part tent revival – two key executives reinforced that they understand the imperative of sustainability and why the company needs to act. Read more »

Reflecting on my past week in Southern China, where I’ve been working with Walmart to help reach its ambitious environmental goals announced last October, my head keeps coming back to an extraordinary meeting I had with Liam Casey, the CEO of PCH International, a trading company responsible for sourcing many of the electronics (and other goods) common on US store shelves.

Casual China watchers may recognize Liam from the story James Fallows wrote about him in The Atlantic in 2007 (which subsequently became a chapter in Postcards from Tomorrow Square) and posts from Fallow’s blog, or from the radio profile the BBC ran on him this April.  Virtually all of the reports have referred to Liam with the honorary title of “Mr. China”, for his detailed grasp of the country and the emerging, and continuously changing, business culture.  Having read (and listened to) all of this background material prior to our meeting, I was ready to be impressed, but I was not quite prepared to be as dazzled as I was by PCH’s business model, or the software systems it has established to provide complete transparency into the products it sources.   Read more »

That’s a hard question to answer of the world’s biggest retailer.  Frankly there’s a lot of good and some not good enough.  This week, Wal-Mart released its 2009 sustainability report.  Since we are working with Wal-Mart on its sustainability initiative, now is a good time for us to share our perspective on Wal-Mart’s progress and the new report.  We’d like to acknowledge some positive things and highlight areas where we feel the company could do better.

First, let’s talk about the basics for a sustainability program and report:  meaningful and ambitious goals along with interim milestones and clear timelines are essential.  How can we tell whether a company is on track?  Pretty simple – the goals are associated with clear metrics and the data supporting them is transparent.  Wal-Mart’s new report represents a big improvement over its predecessor (PDF) in straightforwardly matching goals with progress.  Metrics are explicitly described and Wal-Mart is candid about where goals have changed, progress has been slow or measurement unclear.  We applaud this.

The Achilles heel of this report, however, is data.  In a company as big and complex as Wal-Mart, transparency is key to ensuring the credibility of its claims and the impact of its leadership.  The data behind claims of progress should be made available.  For example, the report states that water use declined by 35% at Wal-Mart China.  Is that aggregate water use for all stores in China?  Average per store?  Over what time period? What was the baseline and what is current usage?  This information would allow the reader to understand the context for the claim and to more readily benchmark Wal-Mart's performance.

Now let’s talk about the substance of Wal-Mart’s sustainability initiative.  Wal-Mart has some truly ambitious aspirational goals: to be supplied by 100% renewable energy, to create zero waste and to sell sustainable products.  The company has also jumped headlong into sustainability across the company, perhaps more deeply than any other company we’ve worked with – working on fuel-efficient trucks, sustainable seafood, organic clothes and food, building efficiency and renewable energy, among others.  Wal-Mart has also been masterful at harvesting business benefits as they go, reinforcing the importance of the sustainability program among its managers and Board.

But what do we know about how Wal-Mart’s actions are measuring up against its aspirations?  Well, not surprisingly, it’s a mixed bag.  Some really impressive efforts and leadership…

Take renewable energy.  According to the figures presented in this report, Wal-Mart anticipates that during 2009 it will source about 1% of its energy in the U.S. from renewables, so there’s a long way to go to reach the 100% renewable goal.  Yet the company is a major solar installer in the United States, recently announced plans to nearly double solar capacity in California and is working with EDF to bring next generation thin film solar technologies into the marketplace.  These facts tell you the magnitude of the challenge facing both Wal-Mart and the country on renewable energy.

On waste, the company reports diverting 57% of the waste generated at US stores and Sam’s Club facilities from landfills.  Laudable.  At the same time, it reports that stores in Japan have reached 75% waste recycling and a model store in the UK reports that 95% of its waste is diverted from landfills.  What will it take to get to these levels across the globe?

And some missed opportunities …

Wal-Mart is lacking an ambitious goal on climate change – the most pressing environmental issue of our generation and one which must be a component of any comprehensive sustainability program.  Yes, the company has set goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at existing stores and increasing energy efficiency in its truck fleet.  The problem is that, as Wal-Mart grows, so does overall greenhouse gas emissions.  In fact, the report includes graphs showing that, while CO2 per unit of sales has declined over three years, total corporate CO2 emissions have increased.

In other words, the company’s contribution to the problem of climate change continues to increase.  Yet we know that, with gutsy leadership, companies of Wal-Mart’s size and scope can find ways to grow their business while shrinking their footprint.  GE, which has grown 13% annually on average since 2003, recently reported that it had exceeded its goal by reducing greenhouse gas emissions 13% below 2005 levels.

We’d like to see Wal-Mart make a corporate commitment to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions, perhaps by using its strongest leverage – its supply chain.  With a unique opportunity to help its suppliers decrease their carbon output, Wal-Mart can reduce total emissions associated with its business even while it expands.

There’s much to be positive about in Wal-Mart’s sustainability program, but there’s also a long, long way to go.  In future entries on the EDF Innovation Exchange blog, we’ll drill down into specific issue areas to provide commentary on progress made and to help impart a sense of urgency, imperative and inspiration for that yet to come.

This post is cross-posted on GreenBiz.com