Wal-Mart Regulating Sustainability Now

Wal-Mart has been requesting information from vendors on their greenhouse gas emissions and wants to know their plans to reduce them. Wal-Mart wants vendors to invest in their local communities.

For vendors that make food products, Wal-Mart has asked them to reduce sodium 25%, sugar 10% and all trans-fatty acids by 100% by 2015. This data will be collated into The Sustainable Product Index that interested customers will use.

Move Over Government, Walmart's the New Regulator in Town | News - Advertising Age

Wal-Mart began work on this index 19+ months ago, led by academics at Arizona State University and the University of Arkansas and now with 65 members in total, including most of the major packaged-goods marketers, a couple of other retailers including Ahold and Marks & Spencer, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and World Wildlife Fund.

An environmentalist Paul Hawken wrote The Ecology of Commerce in 1993. He argued that corporations, not governments, would drive environmental change because governments lack the resources to do the job.

Go, Wal-Mart! If you can do anything about oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy, the world will be a better place.

Tags: wal-mart, sustainable product index, sustainability