Sustainable Packaging: When the Wal-Mart Battleship Changes Course, the Waves Spread for Miles
While Wal-Mart stil obviously lurks as a key driver of many sustainability goals, I'm wondering whether companies have progressed beyond Wal-Mart's directives. In other words, if Wal-Mart were to abandon its Scorecard tomorrow, would brand owners and packaging suppliers continue to move forward with their sustainability goals or would they jump off that bandwagon?One of my fellow observers commented:
If Wal-Mart were to abandon its Scorecard tomorrow (which it won't), it would have little impact on the sustainability movement overall because manufacturers--large and small--are coming to realize that the principal driver of sustainability is economic.I agree--with the following proviso. While there's a powerful economic logic behind less-wasteful, sustainable packaging, it is obviously the case that Wal-Mart's packaging edict has dramatically increased the interest in it and accelerated the progress being made on this front.
If Wal-Mart abandoned its initiative, or went in a different direction, it would have a huge impact on packaging simply due to its direct economic clout with its suppliers. When Wal-Mart sneezes, 60,000 suppliers catch cold.
Wal-Mart's packaging guidelines are like a private regulation, the issuance of which has something like the effect of law. It's one thing to acknowledge that pollution equals financial waste, but very few companies would move forward (at least to the degree they have) without the pressure exerted by regulation.
What's interesting to me about Wal-Mart's guidelines, and about the sustainable packaging movement in general, is that they require the active cooperation of the entire value chain, more so than most sustainability issues I have encountered. Wal-Mart is very far down the chain which, in addition to its size and clout, is why its action has the potential to be game-changing, not just for its direct suppliers, but for theirs and theirs and theirs.
Now if the Sustainable Packaging Coalition could figure out how to get Wal-Mart one step further down the chain--to consumers--that would truly change the game. The retailer has just announced that it reached its goal of selling 100 million low impact fluorescent bulbs, and ahead of schedule at that. Imagine if they could figure out how to get customers into the stores around recycling!
Labels: Packaging, Supply Chain, Wal-Mart
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Mark W. McElroy, on
October 7, 2007 11:09 PM
Mark,
I don't disagree with your sentiment, but I have been heavily influenced in my thinking by "Cradle to Cradle" by William McDonough, the seminal work on how more can be better, or at least not so bad. I do not agree with you that recycling and packaging efforts have been or are marginal. Not only do they carry large environmental benefits in themselves, but recycling is a major gateway to sustainability as it is often the direct environmental action that kids and others can take. Recycling also can inculcate a helpful mindset and lead to other helpful actions as it did for me in terms of composting.
I would be curious to know how you feel about Wal- Mart recently reaching its goal of selling 100 million low impact flourescent lightbulbs. We can agree that it is selling more, but I would argue that it is on the whole a good thing. That underscores my point about Wal-Mart and recycling.
Andy
By , on
October 9, 2007 10:43 PM
Hi Andy:
Overall per capita levels of consumption in the world are increasing, even at rates that exceed population growth. As this occurs, greater amounts of energy and materials are coursing through the economy. This is the ball I think we should keep our eyes on. And to the extent that 'greening up' products leads to greater efficiencies and lower costs, consumption does not lessen, it only grows further. In economics, this is known as Jevon's Paradox.
In any case, I do not think we can consume our way out of our probelms, and to suggest to consumers that they can is to deny the importance of what really needs to occur, which is to put constraints on supply through collective regulatory action, not individual consumptive action.
Regarding Wal-Mart's selling of 100 million CFLs, perhaps you know of data regarding how much it cost to produce and dispose of them, not just how much they cost to use. Indeed, eventually, we'll have to dispose of those 100 million products, too, just as we did the 100 million older ones they replaced.
Also, did you know that CFLs contain mercury, and that Wal-Mart refused to get involved in their disposal and recycling, because in order to do so their stores would have to be classified as toxic waste dumps? Call me a cynic, but I don't think Wal-Mart is really interested in the new green market as anything other than a new source of revenue, be it a green source, a blue one, or otherwise. Have you noticed Wal-Mart hasn't even published its own sustainability report yet? Evidently, its new found religion only goes so far.
Regards,
Mark
By Mark W. McElroy, on
October 12, 2007 9:49 AM
Hi Andy:
Regarding your question about what would happen if Wal-Mart could "could figure out how to get customers into the stores around recycling", my own view is that pretty much nothing of any consequence would follow, insofar as achieving real sustainability is concerned. All this hoopla around greening up consumption seems to rest on the perverse assumption that humans can somehow consume their way out of unsustainability. The logic seems to be that all we need to do is buy more CFLs or products more greenly produced or packaged, and all will be well. Still we are urged to buy more -- pay no attention to the overall growth of consumption and the utterly unsustainable path of the economy as a whole. What folly!
Indeed, if the patterns of production, packagaing, or recyclying that Wal-Mart is advocating will truly lead to sustainability in mainstream economics, then let them come forward with the metrics and measurements to show that that is in fact the case. I for one would be very interested in seeing how the marginal impacts of green packagaing and recyling can possibly reverse the current flows of energy, materials, and wastes to levels that fall within the regenerative and assimilative capacities of the earth. That's the acid test, but it is conspicuously missing from Wal-Mart's 'Scorecard' and all of its current proclamatons on what constitutes sustainability, and how its suppliers should normatively step into line. All of this arguably makes a mockery of sustainability, and those of us who take it seriously.
Regards,
Mark