2Sustain

The World Resources Institute (WRI) is beefing up its efforts to help companies green their supply chains, thanks to a $420,000 grant from Walmart.

WRI’s Green Supply Chain Initiative will develop and deploy a new set of accounting tools to measure the greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts of a company’s supply chain and the products that are sold to customers. These tools will be based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard, which is an international accounting standard used by businesses to identify, calculate and report their own emissions. It was developed by the WRI and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in 1998.
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Back in July, one insider described Walmart’s Sustainable Product Index as “audacious beyond words.”

But these days, suppliers are substituting other adjectives.

Many think this new Walmart initiative is “confusing beyond words” or “intimidating beyond words” or … well, you get the idea.
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Wal-Mart’s recent announcement to begin work on a universal Sustainable Product Index inspired Deloitte’s Enterprise Sustainability group to develop a new whitepaper that explores lifecycle assessment.

The paper, “Lifecycle Assessment: Where is it on your sustainability agenda?” points out that even though the concept of lifecycle assessment (LCA) has been around since the 1980s, it’s only now that U.S. companies are embracing it on a large scale.

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Wal-Mart announced yesterday that it will begin measuring the sustainability of all the products it sells – a move that ClearCarbon says will “revolutionize” the consumer goods industry.

“Wal-Mart’s Sustainability Index will be extremely influential in driving corporate environmental initiatives, with the goal of producing carbon, energy and cost saving throughout the entire supply chain,” says ClearCarbon CEO/President Kyle Tanger. “Wal-Mart is to be commended for its efforts to help suppliers realize the same benefits it has by measuring and managing its emissions. We believe that effective carbon measurement not only provides insight into the sources and magnitudes of emissions, but also clearly serves as one of the best proxies for corporate efficiency. That’s just good business.”

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Earlier today, during a meeting with 1,500 of its suppliers, associates and sustainability leaders at its home office in Bentonville, Arkansas, Wal-Mart announced plans to develop a comprehensive worldwide sustainable product index. This index –which has been described by one insider as “audacious beyond words” –will allow Wal-Mart to measure the sustainability of every product it sells.

“Customers want products that are more efficient, that last longer and perform better,” says Mike Duke, Wal-Mart’s president and CEO. “And increasingly they want information about the entire lifecycle of a product so they can feel good about buying it. They want to know that the materials in the product are safe, that it was made well and that it was produced in a responsible way.”

I couldn’t agree more. And, what’s so significant here is that this initiative will be the big push we’ve needed to move “green” from marketing to measuring. There’s no question that the marketplace is full of misleading claims (greenwashing). With this index, however, the emphasis will be where it belongs: on life-cycle thinking. It will bring clarity, while revealing the fundamental role of the supply chain in every company’s sustainability efforts.

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