RBJ Environmental Leadership Symposium
April 10, 2008 by Emily Ryan | Filed under: 1-The Impact of the Wal-Mart Sustainability Scorecard o, General
I attended the RBJ Environmental Leadership Symposium this past Tuesday and was impressed at how much impact the Walmart Scorecard has actually had on local businesses and their environmental initiatives. In the panel on “Business Advantage to Being Green”, there were two case studies on packaging companies that have made many changes in order to be part of the Walmart supply chain.
According to the panelists, the Walmart Scorecard allows suppliers to use specific metrics in order to evaluate themselves relative to other suppliers.
For the packing industry, the metrics were based on the “7 R’s of Sustainable Packaging”:
- Remove (packaging)
- Reduce (packaging)
- Reuse (packaging)
- Renew (able)
- Recycle (able)
- Revenue
- Read
Diamond Packaging:
- Has reduced packing weight, reduce paperboard usage, and eliminated non-sustainable components such as shrinkwrap
- Uses wind energy to produce packaging
OrCon Packaging:
- Precon Thermoforming uses recycled soda bottles
- Fibercel packaging is reusable over and over again and provides a visible sign of reusability
- All raw materials from recycled markets
- Developed reusable containers for Walmart specifically
- Has made many resources available via the web for education
