Walmart puts more muscle in their sustainability score cards

Walmart is pressing their vendors for even more sustainability data. Developed with the help of the Sustainability Consortium, the new score cards go beyond the 15 questions of the original Sustainability Index and dig much deeper into category specific information. The scorecards will cover 100 categories with more to be rolled out in 2013. Walmart states that vendors who produce positive sustainability results will be rewarded, but those that lag will have to face "family meetings" and the results will be incorporated in to buyer reviews. So far it seems that the sustainability guidelines, although data driven, have been fairly benign in terms of purchasing impacts. Do you think these new score cards will add teeth to Walmart's sustainability initiative? Will score cards spread to other members of the Sustainability Consortium?

Green Biz has a great article on their newest version of the sustainability score card:

If other retailer members (of the Sustainability Consortium,) such as Safeway, Marks & Spencer and Best Buy, develop similar scorecard programs, consumer product sustainability will be pushed to record heights... “The move to build sustainability into the merchandising side of the business is a game changer for the consumer products industry.”

...For each category, suppliers will be ranked according to sustainability progress and action items. Scorecard items will include many of the traditional questions for greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency and waste, but will also include questions relevant to each category. For example, for laptops, the surveys will include questions about the energy used during component manufacturing and chemical exposure to workers; for laundry detergent, the surveys will ask about cold-water-wash messaging
and chemical ingredients.

Read more at GreenBiz

Learn more about Walmart's Sustainability Index

Or check out the Sustainability Consortium