Wal-Mart’s Global Sustainability Index

Summary: this passage is written on Wal-Mart President and CEO Mike Duke announcement
on July 16, 2009. He announced that he takes new initiative on implications and realities and
inherent about the sustainability and the supply chain management. They want to develop
their sustainability in three phases. The main goal is to take “research-driven approach” to
measure the sustainability so that consumers could make educated product buying decisions.
They take a survey of fifteen question to 100000 suppliers of Wal-Mart but that was not
mandatory. They evaluate their sustainability efforts in four steps. The company intend to
work with partners to build a uniform data. Duke also mentioned that to succeed the index
has to be global and has too many stakeholders.
Analysis: Wal-Mart is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain
of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores. The company was founded
by Sam Walton in 1962 and incorporated on October 31, 1969. It also owns and
operates Sam's Club retail warehouses. As of October 31, 2020, Walmart has 11,510 stores
and clubs in 27 countries, operating under 56 different names. Mike duke, President and CEO
of Wal-Mart published an announcement on July 16, 2009. In his statement, he said that the
creation of a worldwide sustainability index, and supply chain management world was
immediately talking about the implications and realities and inherent in this new initiative.
Their intension is to develop sustainability in three phases. They implement the product levels
that measure the environmental and sustainable. Their main point is “research-driven
approach”. They want to make their consumers to believe in educated product-buying
decisions.
For the first step, they develop fifteen questions as survey and provide it to the Wal-Mart
100,000 global suppliers. But the survey is not mandatory. They designed the system to help
suppliers in four steps. And the steps are: energy and climate, natural resources, material
efficiency and people and community. The survey will include simple but powerful questions
covering familiar territory, such as the location of our suppliers’ factories, along with new
areas like water use and solid waste,” said John Fleming, chief merchandising officer, Walmart
U.S. “The questions aren’t complicated but we’ve never before systematically asked for this
kind of information. The survey is a key first step toward establishing real transparency in our
supply chain.
As a second step, the company is helping create a consortium of universities that will
collaborate with suppliers, retailers, NGOs and government to develop a global database of
information on the lifecycle of products -- from raw materials to disposal. Walmart has
provided the initial funding for the Sustainability Index Consortium, and invited all retailers
and suppliers to contribute.
The company will also partner with one or more leading technology companies to create an
open platform that will power the index.
“It is not our goal to create or own this index,” said Duke. “We want to spur the development
of a common database that will allow the consortium to collect and analyze the knowledge
of the global supply chain. We think this shared database will generate opportunities to be
more innovative and to improve the sustainability of products and processes.”
The final step in developing the index will be to translate the product information into a
simple rating for consumers about the sustainability of products. This will provide customers
with the transparency into the quality and history of products that they don’t have today.
Walmart has been collaborating with others to drive positive change across global supply
chains. Our sustainability efforts prioritize people and the planet by aiming to source
responsibly, sell sustainable products, protect and restore natural resources and reduce
waste and emissions. We’ve committed to help make responsible recruitment the norm
across the global supply chain, protect forests, oceans and land, eliminate waste and
significantly reduce emissions in our own operations and work with our suppliers to avoid a
gigaton of greenhouse gas emissions from the global value chain.

In 2019, our company powered an estimated 29% of our operations with renewable energy,
diverted 80% of our waste from landfills and incineration globally and much more.
Reference:
1. https://www.bakingbusiness.com/articles/44131-wal-mart-to-develop-a-global-
sustainability-index
2. https://corporate.walmart.com/global-responsibility/sustainability/
3. https://www.reutersevents.com/sustainability/business-strategy/report-wal-mart-
2009-global-sustainability-report-quantity-quality
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart
5. https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2009/07/16/walmart-announces-
sustainable-product-index