Filed under: Competitive strategy, Wal-Mart (WMT)
In an interesting eco-twist with the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) stated yesterday that it will eliminate all laundry detergents from its shelves that are not packaged and sold in ‘concentrated’ form. In an effort to reduce waste and conserve natural resources, the company said that all U.S. Wal-Mart stores and Sam’s Clubs would only sell concentrated detergent going forward, although a drop-dead date was not reported with the announcement.
After having strolled through Wal-Mart in the last 24 hours, I can say that much of the laundry detergent already sold by the retailer comes in concentrated form — but then, there are many brands that are not. Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE: PG) stated that they will start distributing smaller detergent containers for concentrated liquid detergent this year. P&G’s larger brands are Tide and Downy, among many others.
The move is not really a surprise by Wal-Mart, which has been on a green warpath this year. This summer, the retailer announced that it would only accept smaller packaging from many of its vendors, and created a complete set of guidelines to help those vendors get packaging to where there would be minimal waste after purchase.
In addition to selling and promoting a huge assortment of energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), the company is taking steps to cut back (or even eliminate) high gas usage by its trucking fleet. All of these measures are part of the company’s “Sustainability 360″ plan. The plan includes these initiatives: saving more than 400 million gallons of water, 95 million pounds of plastic and 125 million pounds of cardboard over the course of every year. Now, those are some large numbers.
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