Stephen Stokes of AMR Research has an interesting post over at Climate Progress on the impact of Wal-Mart’s sustainability program. The company is asking more than 100,000 suppliers to answer a series of questions on their products, though getting precise answers may be tough.
Stokes says, for example, that Pepsico spent $40,000 in a four-year process to figure the carbon footprint of one product — Walkers potato crisps.
Moving forward they are anticipating costs on the order of $10,000 to $12,000 per SKU. At 20,000 to 25,000 SKUs per typical supermarket that’s a $250M task just for carbon – and Wal-Mart Supercenters carry over 100,000 SKU’s.
He also points out that a manufacturer is not in control of a product’s full lifecyle, and the carbon footprint could be determined by the type of electricity used (wind, nuclear, coal) or the way a product is disposed of.
But as eco-labels gain more prominence, this excerise will eventually yield to a kind of encompassing green label.
An ideal eco-label should convey all of the environmental and social impacts of a product across its entire lifecycle—from extraction and manufacturing to transportation, use, and disposal.
Wal-Mart’s move looks like a first step in this direction, as difficult as it may be.