Walmart Pushes Significant Reduction in Chemicals of High Concern

Walmart has been making significant progress towards sustainable chemicals in consumables since 2013. This past January, Walmart pledged to begin publicly communicating progress on moving towards sustainable chemicals. This policy seeks to remove substances of high concern from personal care, paper, cleaning, pet, and baby products.

Their most recent public communication on progress has pledged to provide a 95% (by weight) reduction on high priority chemicals sold in the US, as reported in a recent article by Chemical Watch.

Walmart has not publicly released the “10 or so” chemicals Kevin Gardener (senior director of Walmart’s global responsibility) states will be addressed in this reduction. It is worth noting that the Environmental Defense Fund (NGO dedicated to environmental issues) has been working with Walmart on meeting their sustainability goals.

Criteria For Chemicals of High Concern (as stated by Walmart officials in a recent Chemical Watch article):

1. Listing status on one or more authoritative hazard lists as included by Greenwercs (chemical reporting took used by Walmart for supplier ingredient disclosure.)
2. Relevance ranking by business volume, distribution, and exposure.
3. Consideration of emerging regulations, stakeholder concern, and safer distribution feasibility.

Supplier Implications

Walmart has asked suppliers to take part in a sustainability index survey. There were some key takeaways from the data they received:

1. ¾ of suppliers that voluntarily responded provided information on their ingredient disclosure policies.
2. Of these suppliers that reported, 78% said they are disclosing ingredients online in accordance with a naturally recognized standard.
3. Walmart set a goal for suppliers to disclose ingredients for all products set forth in their chemical policy (set in 2015) by 2018. 

Large companies such as Walmart are now setting the precedent on a demand for higher supplier transparency within products they are selling. It is imperative that a supplier knows the origins and status of chemicals within national laws and the guidelines set forth by the companies they sell to.

Source Intelligence provides a dynamic and customizable program in which you can source and manage the chemical substances used in your products. Global product chemical regulations are continuously evolving. As a supplier, you must have the ability to construct your own product chemical compliance program, tailored to you and your clients’ unique needs. This is where Source Intelligence shines as the most comprehensive and dynamic compliance software on the market. Source Intelligence’s platform is fully customizable. Meaning that if the regulations your company needs help with aren’t already within the platform, you can customize and request the addition of regulations or laws to fit your needs.