Wal-Mart Takes On Sustainability

The world's largest retailer recently announced an ambitious plan to put sustainability labels on every product it sells, from cribs to laundry detergent. The retail giant will be polling its 60,000 suppliers to determine respective company commitment to factors from greenhouse gas emissions to community development.

Wal-Mart will be ranking companies based on their answers to fifteen questions - see the quiz here (PDF). It’s not a rating of the products themselves, and there's no consequences yet for a high or a low company score.

Wal-Mart says the goal is transparency. Eventually, the company plans to use this information to develop a rating system for every product it sells. So, a great greenwashing or an important step to offering consumers more environmentally-friendly choices?

As part of our Next Green Thing series, we're joined by Marc Gunther. He's a contributing editor at Fortune and senior writer for Greenbiz.com.

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(Photo by Adam Kuban via Flickr/Creative Commons)