Nearly a decade after setting a series of bold sustainability goals, Walmart has struggled to curb its climate pollution and buy more renewable energy. But the company has already changed the way food is grown around the world โ curbing agricultural pollution, pushing healthier choices, supporting local growers and promoting transparency. And the worldโs largest retailer (fiscal year 2014 revenues: $473 billion) is just getting started.
So what, exactly, are Walmart and its suppliers doing? A lot of things, around not just the environment but affordability, access to food for poor people, health and obesity, safety and transparency.
This week, for example, Walmart announced a partnership with United Suppliers, a cooperative of nearly 700 agricultural retailers across the US that sells seeds, fertilizers and crop protection products to farmers. United Suppliers said it would extend the reach of a program called Sustain, which is designed to reduce soil and nutrient runoff and climate emissions, to farmers who grow corn, soybeans, wheat and canola on 10m acres โ more acreage than Walmartโs better-known partners, like General Mills and Kelloggโs, have pledged to better manage.
โThey can help a farmer go through their practices and say, you can do better,โ explained Michelle Harvey, who leads Environmental Defense Fundโs on-site corporate partnership with Walmart. Walmart, she said, has convinced the worldโs biggest food companies to focus on fertilizer which, when overused, pollutes waterways and needlessly increases greenhouse gases.
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- Walmart will buy more local food in the U.S. and around the world. The company is buying more produce directly from small and medium farms, eliminating the middlemen and the costs they add. Using a pilot program in Costa Rica as a model, McMillon said the company has found a way to โreach small producers and get them into our systemโ. He has taken a personal interest in the effort, visiting with farmers in Costa Rica, Ghana, Zambia and China.
- Walmart will help its customers eat better. The company has reduced sodium by 13ย percent and sugar levels by 10ย percentย in its private-label products, and created a โGreat for Youโ icon to point consumers to healthier food options. Working with its foundation, Walmart will provide nutrition education to 4 million U.S. households.
- Walmart will take a stab at protecting animal welfare by installing small cameras at pork production facilities. โWeโve asked our suppliers to put cameras on the farms so there is true visibility into the treatment of the animals,โ McLaughlin told me.
Interestingly, McMillon made a point of saying that Walmart wants to reduce not just the price of the food it sells, but its โtrue costโ, which he said means that โwe take into account things like greenhouse gases and how much water is used to produce a cropโ.
โParts of the system are priced in,โ he said. โOther parts arenโt.
Read full, original article: Walmart’s quest for low-cost and environmentally friendly food
