Wal-Mart Works towards Sustainability

Wal-Mart Works towards Sustainability

Wal-Mart Works towards Sustainability

Wal-Mart has a lot of leverage in the supply, manufacturing, transportation of goods departments. They are working towards becoming more acceptable to the general public in the way that they do business, the ingredients in their "Great Value" brand, and their produce costs. Their ultimate goal is to be accepted into urban areas that are dense in population. To do this, they are making lots of changes.

Michelle Obama met with their executives as part of her campaign to make healthy food more affordable for the average citizen and to make processed foods healthier. She feels strongly about this subject and said, "We can improve how we make and sell food in this country." Wal-Mart is working with her to head down that path and grow their business at the same time. This, however, is not the first time that Wal-Mart has used its leverage over certain industries to make a difference, and it could potentially affect the ocean freight, land and air transportation industries.

They developed a plan to bring the prices of generic prescription drugs down to $4, so that people could afford the healthcare that they needed. The $4 prescription plan was a huge success and Wal-Mart says that it has saved consumers more than $3.4 billion since 2006. Wal-Mart is now making moves on the produce sector to make healthy fruits and vegetables more affordable.

Andrea Thomas is Wal-Mart's Senior Vice President of Sustainability. She is looking to improve Wal-Mart's relationship with farmers, which she says would stabilize their produce prices and give more of the money paid for produce directly to the farmers. To accomplish this, they are prepared to sever ties with brokers and transportation and logistics companies that are currently acting as a "middle man".

Besides lowering produce prices and improving relationships with farmers, they are also reformulating recipes used in creating their "Great Value" brand to eliminate trans fats and use less sodium and sugar. They also plan to work with suppliers to improve the health factor in many national brands by 2015.

Wal-Mart's Andrea Thomas says that "Sourcing, packaging and transportation initiatives will help to drive costs out of the produce supply chain. We believe we can save Americans who shop here approximately $1 billion per year on fresh fruits and vegetables." They also report that as its suppliers reformulate national brands, consumers nationwide will benefit, whether they shop at Wal-Mart or not.

As the US's largest grocer, Wal-Mart has a big influence on the ocean shipping, trucking, rail and logistics industry. We will be interested to see how their changes affect this sector as time goes on.

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