Sam’s Club debuts label-free bottled water in China
Sam’s Club China is increasing the sustainability of the packaging used for its Member’s Mark private-label water bottles.
The Chinese subsidiary of Sam’s Club is now offering label-free Member’s Mark drinking water. This means the wholesale club retailer can reduce plastic use during manufacturing, leaving just one material to recycle at the end of the bottle’s use.
The lack of a label also reduces ink and energy consumption. Nutrition facts are available on the outer packaging of the bottled water case, which is the minimum selling unit. Sam’s Club said customer response to the new, label-less water bottle will be a key outcome of this trial effort.
Sam's Club China has upgraded packaging across multiple Member's Mark items, exploring different sustainable approaches to update its product lineup. The methods are designed to remove plastic components where possible, replace them with more sustainable alternatives, and redesign processes to make packaging easier to reuse and recycle.
The retailer now uses aqueous coating on paperboard packaging for multiple items, replacing biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film lamination to make the boxes much more recyclable.
In one example of this process, a recent update to the Member’s Mark freeze dried instant coffee powder removed the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) window patching film, applied aqueous coating to replace BOPP film lamination, and reduced plastic by approximately 5.8 grams per box.
In 2020, Sam’s Club parent Walmart set a goal of becoming a regenerative company, which led Sam’s Club to begin evaluating its sustainability efforts. Sam's Club aims to remove certain ingredients from Member's Mark food and consumable products, while increasing its assortment of items that are made using practices that promote animal welfare, help support land and ocean health, mitigate deforestation, utilize more sustainable textiles, and come from renewable sources.
[READ MORE: Sam’s Club private brand gets sustainable makeover]
The company also intends to incorporate more recyclable, reusable and industrially compostable components in Member's Mark items and packaging.
In addition, Sam's Club plans to reduce the brand's environmental footprint by calling for suppliers of Member's Mark items to participate in Walmart's private sector consortium to reduce or avoid one billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, Project Gigaton.
By the end of 2024, over 330 Walmart China suppliers had signed up for Project Gigaton, with over 300 partners implementing energy- and emissions-reduction measures focused on packaging.
Sam’s Club, a division of Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart Inc., operates nearly 600 clubs in the U.S. and Puerto Rico and more than 50 stores in China under the Sam’s Club China banner.
