Wal-Mart Pledges to Reduce Packaging

As part of Wal-Mart’s recent Green campaign, the retailer has pledged to reduce packaging used by it’s suppliers by 5% by the year 2013.  To reach this goal, Wal-Mart has introduced a scorecard that will measure the environmental footprint left by all of their manufacturers.

Wal-Mart’s packaging
scorecard is a measurement tool that allows suppliers to evaluate
themselves relative to other suppliers, based on specific metrics. The
metrics in the scorecard evolved from a list of favorable attributes
announced earlier this year, known as the “7 R’s of Packaging”: Remove,
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Renew, Revenue, and Read.

The cards will allow each supplier to rank themselves in a variety of categories, including: greenhouse gas emissions, raw
material use, packaging size, recycled content, material recovery
value, renewable energy use, transportation impacts, and innovation.  What is unique about this system is that suppliers will not just be assigned a generic label like, bad or less bad.  While companies will be given an over all score, they will also be ranked in individual categories, allowing a specific comparisons to be made.

These cards should be influencing Wal-Marts buying decisions by the year 2008 – the degree to which they reley upon these cards is still unclear though.
Check out an example of the scorecard here.

Wal-Mart Unveils “Packaging Scorecard” to Suppliers