Wal-Mart’s Packaging Scorecard Drives Sustainability

Wal-Mart Packaging Scorecard was launched eight months ago. As of August, more than 8,000 unique vendors has accessed the Packaging Scorecard Web site, and more than 170,000 items has been entered into the system, FoodProcessing.com reports.

The company says some small packaging changes are yielding valuable rewards.

Wal-Mart’s Great Value yogurt was originally packaged in a cup with a plastic lid over a plastic seal. The package was later redesigned to feature foil lids printed with product information. The change is estimated to reduce 930 tons of GHG emissions annually, according to Wal-Mart.

In addition, the company said when it changed the packaging on four produce items to biopolymer in 2005, it saved about 800,000 gallons of gasoline and prevented over 11 million pounds of GHG emissions from entering the atmosphere.

In July, the company introduced a new packaging for milk jugs, which allows trucks to accommodate about 47,000 more gallons per truck.

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