Earth Day Goes Retail; Wal-Mart Impresses With Sustainable Packaging
April 21, 2008
Posted by Kevin Tuerff
President and Principal
EnviroMedia Social Marketing
Happy Earth Day from the folks behind the Greenwashing Index.
Earth Day has never had it better. The Sunday newspaper includes no less than six advertising circulars dedicated to advertising “green” products to celebrate Earth Day (April 22), from companies like The Home Depot, Lowe’s, Office Max and Office Depot.
Last weekend, I wandered into a nearby Wal-Mart Super Center, and was pleasantly surprised to see not only a table highlighting green products near the registers, but dozens of displays throughout the store highlighting the highest-rated products from Wal-Mart’s new Packaging Scorecard.
The green cardboard-covered pallets promoting “Save money. Live Better” inspired me to buy some new products like Emeril’s® chicken broth and Silk® soy milk in aseptic packaging.
On the Cheerios® box I bought from this aisle display, the full back panel is now dedicated to telling the General Mills commitment to health and environment: “Over the past year, Cheerios has significantly reduced the amount of plastic line, paperboard, and corrugate used in packaging we create.”
I was disappointed I couldn’t find a single brand of recycled-content paper towels, or any native plants in the gardening center. On the other hand, this new store has some cool energy-saving features, including motion detectors that turn the lights on and off in the frozen foods section as a customer walks by. But this impressive effort from Wal-Mart is all about sustainable packaging.
Wal-Mart launched the “packaging scorecard” on September 1, 2006, with a goal commitment of reducing packaging across its global supply chain by 5 percent by 2013. In addition to preventing millions of pounds of trash from reaching landfills, it will save a tremendous amount of energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
We saw Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott speak about this effort at the Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics conference last month in Santa Barbara. See the full interview trascript at our Green Canary Web site.
Scott said, “If you can take the waste out, if you can take the cost out, and you can provide people who are working people, living paycheck-to-paycheck, with an opportunity to be more sustainable, we think they will react to it. The reward for those with the best product-to-package ratio and lightest transportation load (fewer greenhouse gas emissions) is rewarded this month with better product placement within Wal-Mart stores nationwide."
Scott said Wal-Mart has 6,000 suppliers now on the packaging scorecard, with some 97,000 items included. A year ago, EnviroMedia Social Marketing helped one of our clients respond to the packaging scorecard questionnaire, and the company’s attention to it paid off: Several of their customer’s brands were among those I found highlighted on the endcaps for their low-impact packaging.
Wal-Mart CEO Scott says, “We are not out saying that we are a green company; we are not. We have never given speeches saying Wal-Mart is a green company. We have an extraordinary distance to go. But think about it — we have all the means for success.”
Interestingly, no one has posted any of Wal-Mart’s new green TV ads to this site (yet).
As organizers of the first America Recycles Day (Nov. 15), I remember how excited we were in 1997 when The Home Depot agreed to display a single end-cap (highlighted aisle display) at every store near the entrance with recycled-content items, at all their stores. Today, their advertising tab is completely dedicated to promoting products that save energy and water. Of all the Earth Day tabs, only The Home Depot printed theirs with 50 percent recycled-content paper.
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Comments
- On April 23, 2008
- rduggan of Chicago said:
- Unfortuantely, no matter what Walmart does enviornmentally, I cannot support how they operate socially. While they are taking steps to be more "green", if their factory workers in China continue to make 27 cents an hour and their American employees still struggle for a living wage, the progress they have made means little to nothing.
