Wal-Mart targets Chinese suppliers

Wal-Mart Stores, the world’s biggest retailer, has decided to meet thousands of its Chinese suppliers as part of a campaign to reduce waste and emissions at the factories that make its products.

The company will recruit an outside consultancy to back the campaign and will ask non-governmental organizations to advise its plant inspectors on its sustainability efforts.

Top priorities for Wal-Mart in China will be waste disposal methods and the reduction of waste and greenhouse gas emissions. The campaign will include guidance on cutting the amount of packaging used and boosting energy efficiency.  

Wal-Mart’s chief executive Lee Scott told a conference in California: ‘We started a very aggressive programme in China that is not only going to deal with environmental sustainability, but is also going to deal more aggressively with the issues of sourcing in China.’ Scott will attend a main meeting with Chinese suppliers himself.

The company is pushing all its suppliers to reduce their packaging by five per cent within the next five years and is working with them to make their most energy-intensive products 25 per cent more energy-efficient by 2011. As part of this drive Wal-Mart wants all its flat-screen television sets to be 30 per cent more energy-efficient by 2010.

Wal-Mart’s longer-term goal is even more ambitious – it wants its suppliers eventually to produce no waste and to use energy only from renewable sources.