Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Walmart Inc. of Bentonville used the opening ceremony of the Climate Week NYC summit to announce several new goals of its environmental sustainability efforts.
The company said it was “doubling down” on its previous initiatives. Its new goals are to eliminate emissions from its global operations and a commitment to “protect, manage or restore” 50 million acres of land and 1 million square miles of ocean by 2030, Walmart said.
“We want to play an important role in transforming the world’s supply chains to be regenerative,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in a news release before last week’s summit. “We face a growing crisis of climate change and nature loss, and we all need to take action with urgency. For 15 years, we have been partnering to do the work and continually raising our sustainability ambitions across climate action, nature, waste and people. The commitments we’re making today not only aim to decarbonize Walmart’s global operations, they also put us on the path to becoming a regenerative company — one that works to restore, renew and replenish in addition to preserving our planet, and encourages others to do the same.”
Walmart had recently released its annual Environmental, Social & Governance Report for the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31, which detailed the accomplishments the company said it has achieved so far. Those achievements included using renewable energy sources for 29% of its operations; diverting 80% of its waste from landfills and incinerators; and, in partnership with suppliers, eliminating 230 million metric tons of emissions since 2017.
“Walmart has been leading on sustainability really for the last 15 years,” said Zach Freeze, the company’s senior director for sustainability, in a phone interview. “We are doubling down on climate, and we are really prioritizing our sustainability efforts because we know it is good for our business and the planet needs it now more than ever.”
Smart Business
Freeze said the urgency and understanding among corporations about the importance of sustainability are growing. Proof of that is just down the road: Tyson Foods Inc. of Springdale announced earlier this month that it planned to start the nation’s largest beef transparency program by buying cattle only from ranchers certified as using sustainable practices.
The sponsors at Climate Week NYC present a who’s who of the top national companies, and Freeze said Tyson’s beef sustainability program shows what is good for business is also good for the planet, and vice versa.
“I think Tyson is a great example of an Arkansas business that we should highlight,” Freeze said. “That [program] is incredible. That is the type of leadership we really want to see. Companies looking into their own supply chain, where they get products, how they source and making sure they do that in a sustainable way that protects nature and is good for the planet.
“Tyson depends on those farms, those ranchers, so to make sure that is done sustainably makes good business sense.”
Walmart has similar goals for some of its food products such as fish, vegetables and coffee.
“We must all take urgent, sustained action to reverse nature loss and emissions before we reach a tipping point from which we will not recover,” said Kathleen McLaughlin, the company’s chief sustainability officer and the president of the Walmart Foundation. “People have pushed past the earth’s natural limits. Healthy societies, resilient economies and thriving businesses rely on nature. Our vision at Walmart is to help transform food and product supply chains to be regenerative, working in harmony with nature — to protect, restore and sustainably use our natural resources.”
Freeze is Walmart’s point man on its ambitious Project Gigaton. The retailer partners with its suppliers to avoid or reduce 1 billion metric tons — a gigaton — of emissions by 2030.
So far, about 2,300 partners have joined the project, and the reduction of 230 million tons, as noted in the ESG report, was from 1,000 suppliers who reported their results.
“Everything we buy and sell and ultimately our customers use consumes energy,” Freeze said.
“This is leveraging the partnerships we have with a lot of our suppliers based on the science from some of our big environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund and Environmental Defense Fund to help guide what needs to happen. [We are] using the power of Walmart to convene and direct efforts towards things like reducing energy and reducing packaging and reducing waste — all the efforts of sustainability combined in an easy platform.”
“Walmart has been leading on sustainability really for the last 15 years. We are doubling down on climate, and we are really prioritizing our sustainability efforts because we know it is good for our business and the planet needs it now more than ever.”
– ZACH FREEZE
Senior Director for Sustainability, Walmart
Lay Off the Gas
Walmart’s zero-emission goals will be fueled by the switch to renewable energy at its facilities and the use of electric vehicles in its transportation fleet.
The ESG report said Walmart has 380 facilities with solar installations with another 98 scheduled by the end of 2020. In 2013, Walmart had 240 facilities with solar installations.
J.B. Transport Services Inc. of Lowell made the first intermodal delivery with an all-electric tractor for Walmart last month in California. Walmart said it now has more than 1,100 electric charging stations at 288 retail sites in 37 states.
The switch to an all-electric fleet is a challenge, and one that can’t happen without advances in technology.
“That technology doesn’t exist at scale today so we are going to be depending on that to improve the next 20 years so we can scale that,” Freeze said. “I would say that we know this level of leadership is needed. We do want to be a pioneer here. We want to make sure that we can effectively sustain our business and really move to what we are calling a regenerative company. We want to transform our supply chains so we are working in harmony with nature and we don’t disrupt ecosystems, and we are able to harness the power of nature to make sure the climate crisis is not exaggerated any more than it is.”
Walmart, in recent years, has shown how packaging adjustments can reduce the amount of fuel needed to transport goods. Freeze said that as ecommerce and home delivery have become more popular — and even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic — the role of Walmart is to make shipping packages as small as possible and easy to recycle for the home customer.
Walmart has reduced waste in its facilities by 80%, but inevitably some of those cardboard boxes and plastic wrappings are used in Walmart deliveries. (
“We definitely pride ourselves on being an omnichannel retailer,” Freeze said. “How do we deliver recyclable packaging to our customers so they don’t have to worry about throwing something away? It’s moving to smaller boxes, recyclable boxes, labeled boxes to help educate and encourage the customer to recycle.”
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