Walmart: Embedding sustainability in a vast supply chain

Pure Strategies started working with Walmart in 2011 on its Sustainability Index, several years after the company announced its intention to leverage deep change within its supply chain. Aware that 90% of the company’s impact rests in its upstream supply chain, global retailer Walmart initially engaged its suppliers through a generic version of the Index in 2009. The Walmart Supplier Sustainability Assessment (SSA) Scorecard signaled the company’s intention to drive improvements by asking suppliers 15 questions about topics such as climate and energy, waste and materials, and people and community.

The SSA received a significant upgrade when the much more comprehensive Sustainability Index launched in the fall of 2012. This time, the questions drilled deep, pushed hard, and were product category-specific. Importantly, they were based on science developed by The Sustainability Consortium (TSC), a global, multi-stakeholder group with input from industry, NGOs, and academics.

Our Role

Drawing on our expertise in developing scorecards and our work with a wide range of manufacturers and industries, Pure Strategies helped guide the TSC’s scientific process, bringing our technical knowledge to the development of key performance indicators and scoring mechanisms.

With the processes at TSC largely in place, Pure Strategies efforts have focused on assisting Walmart in the company’s ambitious plan to incorporate the Index into its core business processes on a scale that is unprecedented and revolutionary. To ensure that the Index lives up to its potential to transform products and supply chains, Walmart is leveraging the power of its vast network of buying teams. Pure Strategies is supporting the company’s buyers in their efforts to embed the Index into their supplier relationships and is providing technical expertise for category-specific initiatives rising out of the Index.