Canada’s Walmart stores are going to be the chain’s first outside the U.S. to adopt the company’s “sustainable product index,” meant to help customers find products made and used in a sustainable way.
Starting this summer, Walmart Canada’s major suppliers will be asked to answer a 15-question assessment survey to “evaluate their sustainability efforts,” the company said in a release Wednesday.
The questions are to cover four areas of interest: energy and climate, material efficiency, natural resources, and people and community.
Once the survey phase is complete, the company said it would create a “Sustainability Index Consortium” and the database that will house information on the lifecycle of products.
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Walmart Canada’s U.S. parent, which has already rolled out such an indexing system for its U.S. retail offerings, will initially fund and help build up the Canadian consortium, which is to include universities, other retailers, suppliers and non-government organizations (NGOs).
The consortium will use a “research-driven” approach to develop the database, which in turn will drive the product index, the company said. It will consider the “full life cycle” of products, from their raw materials to the ways in which they can be disposed of or recycled.
Then comes the Sustainable Product Index tool, which will apply a “simple and convenient” rating system for consumers’ use.
“How that information will be delivered to customers is still to be determined, but it may take the form of a numeric score, colour code or some other type of label,” the company said.
The Canadian sustainability consortium is expected to help determine the scoring process in the “coming months and years.”
Walmart said the timing for the database and index phases of the initiative will be laid out later this year.
Well known for its considerable influence on suppliers, Walmart arrived in Canada in 1994 by buying 122 Woolco stores across the country. It now operates 317 retail stores in Canada, with varying levels of food offerings.
Over 75 of those stores, in Ontario, Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan, are now Walmart “Supercentres,” which include full grocery departments with meat, fresh produce and baked goods.
“Business case”
The company also announced Wednesday that it plans to open its first “sustainable” refrigerated distribution centre this fall at Balzac, Alta., just north of Calgary.
Walmart said it expects the $115 million, 450,000-square-foot Balzac facility to be “one of the most energy-efficient distribution facilities of its kind in North America,” 60 per cent moreso than the company’s traditional refrigerated distribution centres.
The new distribution hub is expected to employ 600 people when it opens this fall.
The announcement was made in Vancouver at the Walmart Canada Green Business Summit, an event convening representatives of Canada’s largest corporations, NGOs, academics such as David Suzuki and government leaders to “share the business case for sustainability.”
