At its annual supplier forum today, Walmart issued a new set of waste reduction commitments around plastic packaging for its private brand program—an initiative that is expected to impact more than 30,000 SKUs. Says Walmart, the move is designed to help get to the heart of the plastic waste problem by focusing on its private brand packaging, building on existing efforts to reduce plastic waste in Walmart U.S. and Sam’s Club operations, and encouraging national brand suppliers to set similar packaging goals.
Says Laura Phillips, Senior Vice President for Global Sustainability at Walmart Inc., the new commitments link to the retailer’s overall vision of zero waste. She explains, “We’ve been working hard to achieve zero waste in our own operations for years, both by reducing our waste and increasing the waste we are diverting to landfills. We’ve also been working on packaging. We published our Sustainable Packaging Playbook several years ago, and we’ve been very much focused on packaging sustainability in our supply chain.
