During Walmart’s spring Global Sustainability Milestone Meeting this morning, the retail giant announced that starting in May, for the first time ever, new reusable bags made with post-consumer recycled content will be available for sale at the checkout carousels in all stores throughout the United States.
The aim of the new campaign is to help reduce plastic waste and increase customer convenience by placing reusable bags in easy-to find and highly frequented sections of its stores. The new initiative follows Walmart’s recent announcement of a series of plastic waste reduction goals that seek to advance the sustainability of the retailer’s private brand packaging by making it 100% recyclable, reusable or industrially compostable by 2025.
Walmart currently has EV chargers available at retail locations across 29 states.
In other news from this morning’s milestone summit, Walmart celebrated the two-year anniversary of Project Gigaton, a platform in which Walmart is working with suppliers to avoid 1 billion metric tons, a gigaton, of emissions from global value chains by 2030. As part of the summit, Walmart Canada announced it is joining Project Gigaton, making it Walmart Inc.’s third international market to work with suppliers towards emissions reductions.
“We are encouraged by the engagement of our suppliers in Project Gigaton,” said Kathleen McLaughlin, senior vice president and chief sustainability officer at Walmart. “To achieve our ambitious climate goals, we aim to expand and deepen that engagement. The progress to date shows how companies can contribute to climate action through practical actions all along the product supply chain. Ultimately, building sustainable supply chains requires collective action from everyone — not only our associates and suppliers, but customers, business in general, and civil society. We are excited to be part of the solution.”
Walmart also continues to make progress in its efforts to increase the availability of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations at its stores and clubs across the U.S. As of 2018, Walmart has EV chargers available at retail locations across 29 states.
Walmart also outlined its progress towards its aspirational goal of being powered by 100% renewable energy — and to power 50% of its operations with renewable energy by the end of 2025. Over the past year, Walmart completed contracts for 136 new solar and wind projects, which will supply the company an additional estimated 2.14 billion kilowatt hours of renewable energy annually — the equivalent electricity usage of over 260,000 homes in a year.
