Walmart Sustainability Analysis

For a sustainable working, it is required that a company looks both internally as well as externally, that is, engage its stakeholders (customers, suppliers, community, and non-government organizations) to understand the impacts and business-environmental concerns. As far as internal sustainability is concerned, employees can be trained and educated to reduce negative environmental impacts through waste reduction, recycling, energy efficiency, etc. Formation of green teams or committees internally to work over such matters can be a powerful motivator. Companies focused on sustainability are appointing chief sustainability officers leading a department with a mandate to proactively develop and implement a corporate sustainability strategy.

Walmart envisions a world where people don’t have to choose between energy they can afford and energy that’s good for communities and the planet. Global energy predictions indicate costs could increase twice as fast as our anticipated store and club growth. Finding cleaner and more affordable energy is vital to everyday low cost. Scaling renewable energy while accelerating energy efficiency is their vision for a more sustainable world.

Walmart promotes the 3 “R’s” of sustainability – reduce, reuse and recycle. In fact, they have formulated a fourth “R” – rethink. By working with their suppliers, they’re developing product packaging solutions that aim at cutting unnecessary waste and save their customers money. These are a few recent examples:

• U.K.: In 2013, their operations in the United Kingdom introduced a lighter version of its private-label Eden Falls water bottles. The new 500-milliliter and 2-liter water bottles are 6% and 13% lighter,

Indian companies have started paying increased attention to sustainability issues and large companies have started establishing a clear link between sustainability and risk management, while conducting their everyday business. This is very much evident from the fact that, about 80 Indian companies in the year 2012 were doing sustainability reporting using the framework developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) whereas, the number was about just 34 in 2011, indicating that more and more companies are recognizing the value of such reporting.

Incorporating sustainability standards as part of internal audit; effectively communicating sustainability development successes, policies; using partnerships between government, businesses and civil society; can be few policies to boost up the corporate sustainability culture in India and move towards actual implementation with real