Many people in the world today are taking the initiative to make the earth a much better, cleaner place to spend our lives; Conserving water, paper, and energy, and learning and creating new ways to reuse our resources.
Now, the biggest retail giants in the world is taking a giant step towards going green by putting “green ratings” on the labels of all products. Wal-Mart plans to determine and display the environmental and social implications of every product it has on the shelves. The company is hoping this labeling will better inform their customers of the impact the products have on the environment as well as the people who contributed to its manufacture.
The environmental benefits come into play when suppliers, not wanting to have a ‘bad score’ with Wal-Mart’s rating system, make the needed changes to their product materials, manufacturing processes, workforce, etc. in order to receive a better score; therefore appealing to more of Wal-Mart’s customers.
There are still many questions being raised about this initiative, such as how long would this take to implement, how will it work, and how will a company with so many products and suppliers be able to pull this off efficiently? Any company that wants to do business with Wal-Mart will have to provide related environmental impact data, and to do so, each company will need to utilize carbon and energy management software – which may not be a “quick and easy” process.
How does your company calculate its impact on the environment? Do you put any demands on suppliers for energy conservation? I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the future holds for Wal-Mart, but for now, we can all do our part for the environment.