Walmart Brazil explains "end to end" product life cycle thinking

...At Walmart Brazil, one of the many sustainability initiatives that we've begun is our End-to-End Project, which analyzes the entire life cycle of select consumer products to reduce their environmental impact. We began End-to-End three years ago because we wanted to make the products our customers are buying more sustainable. At the time, many of our suppliers weren't aware of the benefits that come from greener products, and we wanted to help them integrate more sustainable practices in their businesses. We initiated a partnership with Cetea, the Packaging Technology Center, related to the Food Technology Institute, ITAL, to study products from the sourcing of raw materials to disposal of the waste after consumption. What we accomplished produced groundbreaking results....

...After the first round of End-to-End, suppliers were satisfied, improvements were being made to even more products across our supply chain, and sales of the improved products increased significantly, which tells us that customers want greener choices. In the second round of product analysis, improvements were made to 13 more products. In fact, so many suppliers wanted to participate in the second round that we had to turn several away because we wanted to focus on making the selected products the best they could be...

This guest post was written by Camila Valverde, Director of Sustainability, Walmart Brazil.

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