Wal-Mart begins rating supplier sustainability

BENTONVILLE, Ark. Wal-Mart Stores reported today that it will begin rating suppliers tomorrow using its packaging scorecard to track their progress toward developing sustainable packaging.

The scorecard was first introduced at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2006 and has been used in a trial phase for the past year. Wal-Mart said its next step is to achieve a 5%  packaging reduction by 2013.

"The packaging scorecard helps everyone make better decisions that are good for business, our customers and the environment," said Matt Kistler, senior vp of sustainability at Wal-Mart. "It's important to us that our suppliers see the intrinsic value behind sustainability, both for their business and the environment. We've made significant progress throughout the first year of the scorecard and it is a key responsibility of our suppliers to input new products and update packaging changes on an ongoing basis."

As of January 30 more than 97,000 products have been entered into the scorecard by 6,371 distinct vendors. The scorecard evaluates the sustainability of product packaging based on several key metrics, including greenhouse gas emissions, product-to-package ratio, space utilization, innovation, the amount of renewable energy used in packaging production and emissions related to the distance packaging materials are transported. Suppliers receive a score in each category and can view how they rate overall compared to their competitors in each product category.