IN 2005, 20 YEARS AGO (!), “Walmart’s CEO’s sustainability vision to Walmart employees and suppliers called for reducing waste, using more renewable energy and selling products that “sustained people and the environment.”
“In a way, these goals sounded easy. Simply cut down on waste, become more efficient, convince its legions of suppliers to make more sustainable products and sell them at its “low, low prices.”
Sustainability goes up, costs go down, everybody wins. But as Scott and his successors learned, this was easier said than done.”
From The Conversation U.S.’s 2018 write up by Andy Spicer, Professor of International Business, University of South Carolina, and the co-founder of The Sustainability Consortium, David G. Hyatt that offers the most objective and transparent reflection on the impacts and challenges of Walmart’s ‘sustainability experiment.’
Some aspects were relatively straightforward – efficiency on energy use and waste gains, renewable energy credits … but others, especially ‘non-eco-efficiency impacts,’ continue to be elusive. Why?
The coverage on the 20th anniversary of Walmart’s then CEO speech by some as a watershed in sustainable leadership has fascinated me – for eg Trellis Group, “20 years later, assessing the impact of a Walmart CEO’s ‘gutsy’ sustainability speech” (which relies on analysis from interviews of staff from groups who were funded by the Walton Family Foundation for over 20 years, such as Environmental Defense Fund and the Environmental Working Group: of note, several of the Board of Trustees on Walton Family Foundation have also served on Walmart’s Board of Directors over the past two decades.)
Yes, Walmart has reduced waste to landfills and offset its energy use by buying renewable energy credits – these are ‘win-wins’ or efficiency gains that improve profits.
However, Walmart’s commitment to “selling products that “sustained people and the environment” has been murky at best with their Scope 3 GHG emissions actually increasing, for example. What about water use? Water Quality? Deforestation and land use change? Main Street economies? Workers rights and pay?
Not much has been said about Walmart’s progress on many of these sustainability indicators, these are the issues that, to improve, require increasing Walmart’s ‘cost ledger,’ while hoping they can pass these costs off to their customers.
For Walmart, who has cultivated customers who demand “the lowest prices” they realized their customers wouldn’t pay more for “sustainable produced” products … and these customers had alternatives outside of Walmart.
But this isn’t surprising. This is the challenge of every company looking to maximize profits at the least cost. If Walmart can’t do it then why are we expecting others?
First published here: Follow Dr. Derric N. Pennington on LinkedIn
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