It's rare to have a conversation about packaging sustainability and not mention the Walmart packaging scorecard. But when Walmart introduced its scorecard five years ago, even the company was surprised at the response.
"I don't believe Walmart at the time foresaw the size of the impact," said Ron Sasine, senior director of packaging for Walmart. "We knew we were providing tools others might use and said, at the time, we were developing something that we want the industry to feel free to benefit from. But the scale and size of impact has been larger than we anticipated."
The Walmart packaging scorecard is a measurement tool that forced suppliers to evaluate themselves relative to other suppliers, based on specific metrics. The scorecard evaluates many environmental attributes of packaging, including greenhouse gas reductions, substrate material choices, and chemical composition.