Imagine
If you’ve read or heard much about Wal-Mart, you likely know the magnitude of its power. If it were an independent country, it would have the 23rd largest economy in the world - at that size, Wal-Mart can certainly influence some major change. A great example of this is the deodorant story from the early 90s.
Prior to the early 90s, deodorant came boxed. The plastic deodorant stick was packaged in a paperboard box. In The Wal-Mart Effect, Charles Fishman describes how in the early 1990s, Wal-Mart decided the box was a waste. It wasted cardboard, took up shelf space, increased shipping expenses, and was unnecessary since the plastic deodorant package was more durable than the box. So Wal-Mart asked their suppliers to eliminate the box. Of course, they did. And it benefited everyone - the box turned out to cost about 5 cents, which Wal-Mart split with its suppliers - the deodorant makers got a couple cents, and a couple cents of savings were passed on the Wal-Mart customers. Everyone, except for the box makers, that is.
According to the Sr VP of Sustainability in a talk I attended this weekend, the Wal-Mart Sustainability Team has met with Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, a few times this year. During these meetings, Yvon had a few requests of Wal-Mart. They included
1. Wal-Mart should make suppliers change the ingredients in their products, including eliminating high-fructose corn syrup. He told them “If you told your suppliers to clean up their act, you could change the world.” He states, “They could do that to Kraft…Wal-Mart is 25 percent of Kraft’s business. You could change the world if you told Kraft, ‘We don’t want any more high-fructose corn syrup in our products’.”
2. Wal-Mart should make suppliers eliminate the “on” light on appliances. There’s no reason to have a green light that shows your tv is “on” when you are watching it. Yvon did research to find that if Wal-Mart required this, it would save many power plants worth of energy.
Imagine.
(Though they apparently have no plans to respond to these requests, Wal-Mart did just have a Sustainability Summit in Beijing in October during which it revealed a mandate for a sustainable supply chain from its suppliers in China.)
