‹ grocery
grocery ›
Getting
green
Walmart Canada’s sustainability program
is ambitious. And company president David
Cheesewright doesn’t mind sharing it with
competitors By rob gerlsbeck | Photography by Jeff Kirk
What do you ask the president of the
world’s most powerful company when the
two of you are just hanging out at Walmart
headquarters?
In my case, I ask David Cheesewright about the gum drum. “What the heck is that thing?”
I inquire, pointing to what looks like a child’s toy drum attached to a recycling bin. There
are loads of these contraptions all over Walmart’s low-slung head office in the sprawling
city of Mississauga, Ont. You can’t miss them. So during a break in our photo shoot with
Cheesewright, president and CEO of Walmart Canada, I just have to ask what the drums
are for. “Oh those,” he replies. “The thing is, when you want your office to produce zero
waste, you have to recycle everything. And that includes gum.” Together we peer down
the drum’s tiny opening. Sure enough, a few chewed-up morsels have been deposited by
Walmart staffers. When I wonder aloud whether all this old chewing gum is going to be
recycled into new sticks of Trident for Walmart’s shelves, Cheesewright just laughs.
In fact, all that chewing gum gets turned into compost and organic fertilizer. It’s part
of a massive effort within Walmart to eliminate waste entirely. Next to the gum drum sits
a box to collect polystyrene–the foamy white stuff used in cheap coffee cups and product
packaging. Polystyrene is nasty stuff for the planet. It takes hundreds of years to break
down. I’m told Cheesewright has an especial hate-on for polystyrene and doing something
about it has become something of a priority. Two years ago Walmart found a company
that could recycle it. Today all the polystyrene from head office and 30 Walmart stores in
southern Ontario is shipped out and turned into fire-resistant commercial insulation.
14 | www.canadiangrocer.com | august 2010
august 2010 | Canadian Grocer | 15
grocery ›
David Cheesewright at Walmart’s
Canadian headquarters. The
retailer aims to divert 90% of its
waste from landfills by 2014
These are two examples, albeit tiny ones, of how key
sustainability has become to Walmart. It’s hard to look
into any of the company’s operations these days and not
see sustainability interwoven in some way. At the top level,
Walmart now diverts 84% of the waste it produces at all
of its stores and warehouses in Canada from landfills. The
head office diverts 95%. Each new Walmart store is at least
30% more energy efficient than stores built four years ago.
>“The environment is not something
any of us should be looking at for a
competitive edge,” says Cheesewright
The company is adding wind turbines and solar panels
to some stores, and operations staff have scoured older
Walmarts this year in search of environmental leaks to
plug. Simply going back and checking the HVAC system at
150 Walmarts (a process known as recommissioning) has
improved heating and cooling efficiency by 6% to 10%.
Meanwhile in Nova Scotia, Walmart’s Bridgewater store
cut its garbage output so much that, as of this April, it had
reduced waste pickup from once a week to once every two
months. In July, that location became the first in the chain
to create near zero waste. And in Manitoba, Saskatchewan,
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 31 Walmart stores are
now supplied by rail rather than trucks, resulting in a 45%
reduction in emissions and 5% to 10% savings in fuel. At the
same time, Walmart is encouraging suppliers and its 86,000
employees to think green. “As the world’s biggest retailer,
Walmart can inspire more people than just about anybody,”
says Paul Lingl, a climate change specialist with the David
Suzuki Foundation in Vancouver.
But it is Walmart’s latest green initiative that is surely the
most eye-popping. In February, just before the 2010 Winter
Olympics, the company organized the Green Business
Summit in Vancouver and invited not only suppliers, but
also rivals like Loblaw, Shoppers Drug Mart and Canadian
Tire, to swap environmental ideas. Walmart is willing to
share anything it’s learned about sustainability with the
competition, declares Cheesewright. “The environment
is not something any of us should be looking at for a
competitive edge. The problem is too big and no one is going
to solve it on their own. The more we share, the better.”
My plan is your plan
To find the roots of Walmart’s green strategy, you have to
go back to the morning of Oct. 24, 2005 and a conference
call convened by Lee Scott, worldwide president of Walmart,
with his executives. Scott began by talking about Walmart’s
unbelievable size–“If we were a country, we’d be the
20th largest in the world”–and its many critics. He had
recently started to meet with some of them, such as Jeffrey
Hollender, founder of the influential household cleaning
products firm Seventh Generation. Folks like Hollender said
Walmart needed to become more responsible and change
how it did business. Scott didn’t disagree. (It’s interesting to
note that while Hollender used to say he’d never do business
with Walmart, his company’s products recently hit shelves in
some Walmart stores.)
But back in late 2005, Walmart’s reputation was sinking
fast. It was the poster child for endless consumerism,
august 2010 | Canadian Grocer | 17
grocery ›
‹ grocery
cheap labour and offshore manufacturing. Yet in the
summer and fall of 2005, there had been a brief pause in
the tarring and feathering of its reputation. That August,
Hurricane Katrina had smashed into Louisiana and
Mississippi. While the government institutions people
expect to help in an emergency (the police, hospitals, the
Federal Emergency Management Agency) failed, Walmart
did not. The retailer shipped in millions of dollars’ worth
of products to the area ahead of FEMA, and in one case a
store manager in Mississippi cleared a path to her store
with a bulldozer, then started giving away everything that
people to return old, inefficient lawn mowers to the stores
to get credit for a new one. He thinks there are more
opportunities to share sustainability information with
others. That’s where Sharegreen.ca comes in. The website
was launched around the Green Summit and contains case
studies and information on what companies are doing to
be green. “There’s enough work being done to look at what
everyone is doing and share it,” says Pelletier.
Much of Walmart’s sustainability initiatives, however, are
focused on hammering away at the three goals laid out by
Scott in that 2005 conference call. They include retrofitting
stores to improve energy efficiency by
20%, slashing plastic bag use in half
>“There might be more flexibility in what returns we
and diverting 90% of Walmart’s waste
need for sustainability initiatives than other things we
from landfills by 2014, up from the
do, but we try to make sure there’s nothing we do that current 84%. In October, Walmart will
isn’t financially returnable in the long term”
open its first refrigerated distribution
centre designed around sustainability.
wasn’t damaged to the local citizenry: water, shoes, socks,
The facility in Balzac, Alta. will be 60% more energy
food–even insulin from the pharmacy. After retelling that
efficient than a typical cold warehouse and forklifts will run
story to his executive team, Scott suggested that if one
on hydrogen fuel cells instead of lead-acid batteries.
Walmart employee could make such a big difference in a
The bottom line
catastrophe, what could Walmart achieve if it set the whole
All these initiatives aren’t just good for the planet. They’re
organization to do something positive, such as improving
good for Walmart’s bottom line. Over the next five years,
its impact on the environment? He then announced
the Canadian operation expects its sustainability programs
Walmart’s new sustainability initiative, which he boiled
will reduce costs by $140 million. Switching to low-watt
down to three goals: 1. to be supplied entirely by renewable
light bulbs at its 300 stores alone will save $6 million a year.
energy; 2. to create zero waste; and 3. to sell products that
What’s probably more interesting is that sustainability is
sustain resources and the environment.
earning Walmart money–an estimated $60 million over the
One thing Scott didn’t decree was how each of its global
next five years as it sells material for recycling.
divisions should achieve those goals. Walmart Canada has
Critics might point out that this shows Walmart’s
largely developed its own initiatives. Those began in 2006
sustainability programs aren’t entirely altruistic.
under then-president Mario Pilozzi. But they’ve sped up
Cheesewright doesn’t dispute it. Ever since Sam Walton
since Cheesewright took over as president in February
2008. “He’s really taken this to a new level,” says Walmart’s opened the first Walmart in sleepy Bentonville, Ark., in
1962, the company’s mantra has been to lower prices.
VP of corporate affairs and sustainability, Andrew Pelletier.
To do that consistently, it has to keep cutting costs.
Take February’s Green Summit, for instance. Pelletier
Sustainability is one way to do that because it removes
came up with the idea to get businesses together to share
inefficiencies and waste. “There aren’t many initiatives I
their green strategies. But at a meeting, Cheesewright
sign off on that don’t give a business return,” Cheesewright
asked whether Walmart’s retail competitors would be
says. “There might be more flexibility in what returns we
invited. They should, he argued. For Cheesewright, asking
need for sustainability initiatives than other things we do,
Loblaw, Home Depot and Shoppers Drug Mart to attend
but we try to make sure there’s nothing we do that isn’t
seemed like a no-brainer. In Great Britain, where he grew
financially returnable in the long term.”
up and cut his teeth at Mars and at Walmart subsidiary
One sustainability program Walmart doesn’t have a line
Asda, retailers often share information where it relates to
item for, though, is called “My Sustainability Plan”–an
solutions from which they can all benefit.
effort to get the retailer’s employees to do something
It’s no wonder, then, that since that summit in
good for themselves, their families and the environment.
Vancouver Walmart has kept in touch with companies
Walmart Canada was the first division outside the U.S. to
like Home Depot. Staff from the hardware giant have
take on the program and Cheesewright is now involved in
touched base with their colleagues at Walmart on several
the global initiative. About half of all employees in Canada
occasions, says Home Depot spokesperson Tiziana
have signed on. The program is simple, says Cheesewright:
Baccega. Cheesewright is especially impressed with Home
commit to something good, tell your co-workers about
Depot’s Eco Options program, which employs government
it and then keep them up to date on your progress. At
rebates on environmental products and encourages
18 | www.canadiangrocer.com | august 2010
Walmart headquarters, staff have filled a bulletin board
with some of their goals: one pledged to buy a tankless
water heater; another wants to quit smoking. Someone else
vowed to stop drinking pop while another person promised
to make her own cleaning products.
Cheesewright has several of his own goals: get his three
kids to recycle more; install energy-efficient light bulbs at
home (that one is already done, he says) and eat together
as a family at home more often. There’s one more: ride his
bike to work at least once a week–a 21-kilometre trek from
the nearby town of Oakville.
Testing, testing...1-2-3
It’s a bright Wednesday morning in July and I’m standing
outside the new Walmart Supercentre in Burlington,
Ont., a tidy, affluent suburb on the shore of Lake Ontario.
Drive a few minutes west and a bridge takes you over the
Armageddon greyness of Hamilton’s belching steel mills.
But in Burlington the air is fresh and clean. So is the new
Walmart. It opened last year and still has that opening-day
sheen. It looks like any other Walmart, but really there’s no
Walmart’s crosscountry conservation
other store like it. This is Walmart Canada’s environmental
demonstration store, designed with a pile of features that
Walmart hopes to use in other locations to make its retail
fleet the greenest in the country.
My tour guide is Andrew Telfer, Walmart’s manager
of sustainability. Telfer has a degree in environmental
geography, but he’s actually a food industry veteran. He
started out in sales at General Mills selling brands like
Cheerios, then went into research at Nielsen. Five years
ago he joined Walmart’s pricing department, working on
the retailer’s price strategy in food just as it was beginning
to sell groceries in Canada. As sustainability manager, he’s
involved in every part of the company’s environmental
strategy, from purchasing to store building to operations.
Before construction of the Burlington store, says Telfer,
“we decided to pack one store full of all the things we
wanted to do with sustainability and then see what works
best.” Those things start seven feet below the parking
lot with 15 kilometres of piping filled with glycol, a heat
transfer fluid. In summer, the pipes pull heat from the
store and dissipate it into the ground. In winter, the
Sustainable products:
1,000 products in Walmart stores
are designated environmentally
friendly, up from 300 in 2007
Balzac, Alta. Engineered with
sustainability in mind, the company’s
perishable distribution centre is set to
open in October. All of the materials
handling fleet will run off hydrogen fuel
cells, resulting in an estimated savings of
$2 million over the next seven
years in operating costs
By the Numbers
$140 million the amount
Walmart estimates it will save
over the next five years through
energy-saving initiatives and
supply chain efficiencies related
to sustainability
Social responsibility: About half of
Walmart’s 86,000 employees have signed
up for the My Sustainability Plan, a program
that encourages staff to commit to do
something good for the environment or
themselves and their family
Vancouver In February,
Walmart held a Green Business
Summit in Vancouver, inviting
suppliers and competitors to
attend and share sustainability
initiatives. David Suzuki was the
keynote speaker
Burlington, Ont. In January 2009, Walmart
opened a Supercentre here to test all of its
environmental initiatives. The store uses
60% less energy than a standard Walmart
84% how much of Walmart’s
garbage is being diverted from
landfill
90% how much of Walmart’s
waste it aims to divert by 2014
Bridgewater, N.S. In July,
the Walmart here became
the first in the chain to
divert 98% of its waste
from landfills–allowing it to
claim that it produces zero
garbage
august 2010 | Canadian Grocer | 19
grocery ›
That pesky packaging
Walmart’s Packaging Scorecard grades suppliers
on their sustainability efforts. The program’s aim:
to take 5% of material out of packaging by 2013.
Companies supplying the retail giant have found
innovative ways to help hit that target:
Three years ago Gillette
changed the way its Fusion
razor packaging is made.
The old method used foillaminated PET (polyethylene
terephthalate) inserts. The new
packaging uses direct-print
distortion blister technology,
which has cut plastic used to
make this product by 230 tons a
year in North America
El-En Packaging of
Vaughan, Ont., cut
20% from the weight
of the boxes used for
Walmart’s private
label trash bags by
making the boxes
smaller and thinner.
Amount saved: 21
metric tons of paper
a year
When Nestlé redesigned its Nesquik
700 ml Syrup Bunny Bottle, it also
reduced the package weight to 52
grams from 55. Those three grams may
not seem like much, but they’ve added
up to a savings of 6,645 kilograms of
high-density polyethylene
process reverses. Heat from underground is
sent into the store through the floor. On most
days this geothermal technology is enough to
maintain a comfortable temperature.
A host of gadgets ensure power use is kept to
a minimum. Temperature sensors heat and cool
only as needed. A white roof membrane reflects
hot sun in summer. The lighting is all low-watt
or LED to conserve electricity, and heat from
refrigerators is collected and used to warm the
store. The result: the Burlington store uses 60%
less energy than a standard, old Walmart store.
There are more surprises as Telfer and I walk
the store, the most inauspicious of which are
found in the grocery aisles. The vegetable cooler,
for instance. Like most stores, it’s wide open so
customers can pick up their carrots, celery and
lettuce. “It’s like leaving your refrigerator door
open, though,” admits Telfer. To keep the cool air in when no one’s
shopping, Walmart installed rollup blinds in the cooler. At night,
after the store is shut, these reflective grey curtains are pulled
down so the coolers don’t have to work so hard to maintain a chilled
temperature. Over in the freezer aisle, LED lights have replaced
typical freezer fixtures. The lights are also motion-sensor controlled,
so when there are no customers in the aisle, it’s lights out.
Not everything has worked so well at this test store. Telfer points to
the skylights as an example. A lot of Walmart stores in the southern
U.S. have installed them. They let in more natural light, meaning
less need for artificial lighting and therefore smaller electricity bills.
But in Canada’s colder climate the tradeoff in heat escaping through
skylights hasn’t been worth the savings in lighting costs.
Next we head into the back room where Telfer shows off the store’s
compactor. Layer after layer of cardboard boxes and plastic bags are
being stuffed into what is essentially a giant tiered cake of recyclables.
Each crushed package weighs 600 pounds and they’re taken away
twice a week to be recycled. Nothing is wasted–literally. For instance,
organic waste from Burlington is packed into giant garbage bins for
compost. But since government regulations forbid double-stacking of
organic waste bins during transport, the empty space in the back of
trucks is filled by polystyrene, which is also recycled. “It means only
one truck on the road instead of two,” Telfer explains.
The Burlington store easily addresses two of the three pillars of
sustainability laid out in 2005 by Walmart head honcho Scott. It’s
the third–selling more environmentally friendly products–that
remains a huge challenge. But it’s also where the company can make
the biggest impact. As the world’s largest purchaser of products,
Walmart has the clout to change not just its own environmental
record, but that of its suppliers as well. Case in point: its decision
three years ago to only sell concentrated laundry detergents.
Manufacturers could make two-times concentrated detergent for
Walmart and diluted versions for other retailers. But considering
the giant volumes Walmart buys, that didn’t make sense.
Telfer thinks Walmart can do the same in other categories. Take
clothing, for instance. The most damaging part of shirts and pants
we wear to the environment isn’t at the retail level. It’s in laundry we
do at home. What if Walmart’s suppliers made more clothing that
required cold-water rather than warm- and hot-water washes? The
savings in electricity worldwide would be huge.
Walmart’s influence is already nudging manufacturers in the
right direction. Take it’s Packaging Scorecard, which measures whether
suppliers are cutting back on their own waste. In 2009, Walmart
Canada asked one of its suppliers, El-En Packaging, which makes
private label garbage bags, to find a way to reduce its packaging. The
company, based in Vaughan, Ont., immediately reduced the size and
thickness of its chipboard boxes. Overall, the weight of the boxes
dropped 20%. Cheryl Babcock, vice-president of operations, says
there was big concern that the smaller boxes would get lost next to
the larger containers of the big brands. But sales have kept up. The
company expects to save 21 metric tons of paper a year because
of the changes. As a result, Babcock says El-En will pay for new
machinery it had to purchase within a year and a half. “It absolutely
surprised us how much we saved.”
august 2010 | Canadian Grocer | 21
‹ grocery
Walmart’s Burlington environmental demonstration store (above) uses a
geothermal heating system. Right: the retailer now sells 1,000 environmentally
friendly products, three times as many as a few years ago
Before I leave Burlington, I’m struck by another unusual
environmental benefit of this store: its size. At around
100,000 square feet, it’s half the space of Walmart’s earlier
monster Supercentres. The smaller footprint is partly
the result of Cheesewright’s European retail background.
In England, retailers have less space to build stores and
so rely more on clever merchandising and assortments
than a supersized store floor. “Whenever a store manager
says ‘I need more space,’ I kind of laugh to myself,” says
Cheesewright. The Burlington store is doing great volume
business, he says. And because of the smaller size, it’s
cheaper to build and operate.
The trouble with tomatoes
David Cheesewright is a straightforward guy when it
comes to the environment. Like most executives quizzed
on the subject, he’ll talk about sustainability being the
right thing to do and leaving the planet a better place for
the next generation. But he’s pragmatic, too, and skeptical
of ideas that sound good but don’t actually do anything.
Take the company’s Sustainable Product Index, currently
in development. It’s been suggested that Walmart will
colour- or number-grade each product’s environmental
impact so customers can make informed choices. There’s a
danger in making things too simple, though, Cheesewright
points out. He cites an experience from his Asda days.
Asda was importing tomatoes from Spain, but in deference
to the local food movement it began buying only tomatoes
homegrown in the U.K. To gauge the results, it hired an
auditing firm. The findings surprised everyone: thanks
to Great Britain’s soggy climate, tomatoes have to be
grown in greenhouses. And the environmental damage of
greenhouses is much worse than the impact of transporting
sun-grown tomatoes from Spain. That is perhaps one
reason why Walmart has so far relied on third-party
sustainability certificates like EcoLogo and the Sustainable
Forestry Initiative. Walmart now carries 1,000 such
22 | www.canadiangrocer.com | august 2010
products, up from some 300 in 2007.
Cheesewright also wants Walmart’s sustainability
initiatives to have some kind of payback. It could be
immediate (such as recycling) or long term (solar panels).
Cheesewright argues that asking for a return is a good
thing because it forces employees to think creatively.
For example, when Walmart’s store builders pitched
the idea of geothermal energy for the Burlington test
store, Cheesewright balked. The costs to install pipes
underground were astronomical. Undaunted, the
construction team found a company in Alberta that
installs the pipes inexpensively using something called a
spider plow. Suddenly, the project became cost effective.
Walmart’s focus on the bottom line doesn’t always please
environmentalists. “I woudn’t call them a green company,”
says Lingl at the David Suzuki Foundation. Still, he says
Walmart is moving in the right direction. And Lingl’s
boss, David Suzuki, hasn’t shied away from showing up at
Walmart conferences like the Green Business Summit. He
also appeared in a promotional video with Cheesewright
in which he pointed out the obvious reason for paying
attention to Walmart: “Because business can make changes
faster than anyone,” said Suzuki.
Don’t think Walmart has gone soft, though. When I
enter Cheesewright’s tiny office (the shelves are George
brand ready-to-assemble furniture, sold at Walmart), I’m
invited to interview the boss at a waist-high table. No
chairs. Cheesewright prefers having meetings standing up.
It’s a British thing, he says. People tend to get right to the
point when they’re not sitting down.
Still, Cheesewright happily chats for an hour. As our
interview winds down, he reiterates that Walmart is
willing to share its environmental knowledge. “But we’re
still a pretty tough competitor and we’re going to continue
to be on behalf of the customer.”
Walmart may be turning green. But it’s still lean
and mean. CG