Wal-Mart’s announcement of its new sustainability index marks the dawning of the age of ecological transparency in the marketplace. This is not just idle speculation; Wal-Mart has signaled that suppliers who ignore the requirements for ecological transparency will become “less relevant” to them. In other words, suppliers may one day compete for shelf space on the basis of their transparency about the ecological impacts of their products.
Wal-Mart Exposes the De-Value Chain - Leading Green - HarvardBusiness.org (via chartreuse)
I’m both impressed and disturbed that Wal-Mart has decided to take on sustainability the same way they took on efficiency - by bullying suppliers to bend to their whim, or go out of business after Wal-Mart stops stocking their products. Wal-Mart being Wal-Mart, I expect the unspoken demand is for suppliers to absorb the cost of ‘greening’ production, while Wal-Mart gets the direct benefit of ‘going green’.
The disturbed reaction is related to how many people will champion the same approach when it is applied to environmental impact, rather than just cost.
