Walmart's Pledge: "Only sustainable palm oil in branded products by 2015"
12-13-10
Business and Environmental Leaders for Sustainable Landscapes
Advancing Sustainable Supply Chains Initiatives
Supporting private sector leadership initiatives to protect business, the economy, jobs and the
environment through the conservation and sustainable management of the
world's tropical forest and agricultural landscapes
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Walmart's Pledge: "Only sustainable palm oil in branded products by 2015"
Sustainable Supply Chains for Reducing Emissions. Moderator: Peter Seligmann - Chairman and CEO, Conservation International; Achim Steiner - Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme; Rob Walton - Chariman of the Board of Directors, Walmart
On December 8, 2010, at a UN Climate Conference in Cancún, during an event to review global solutions to end deforestation, Walmart Chairman Rob Walton, announced that his company has committed to using 100% sustainably-sourced palm oil for its branded products by late 2015. The significance of this announcement is most impressive given that Walmart is the largest business in the world with $405 billion in annual sales. This heroic pledge represents the perfect win-win for protecting business and the environment, saving millions of acres of tropical forests while helping to insure that Walmart will benefit from a sustainable supply of raw materials. Particularly in Indonesia, where deforestation is the typical scenario for creating inexpensive farmland to grow palm oil, this announcement represents a highly effective non-government, non-regulatory vehicle for preventing unsustainable agriculture. The bottom line is that this voluntary declaration is as beneficial to Walmart's future health, and the company's continued contribution to the U.S. and global economy, as it is for the health of our planet. And given that destroying forests and forest-lands contributes more carbon pollution to the atmosphere than all of the cars, trucks, ships and planes in the world, and undermines the livelihoods of millions of indigenous and forest dependent communities, this win-win scenario has environmental and social co-benefits that are well beyond saving our world's irreplaceable natural resources.
More than Walmart: Unilever, Coca Cola, General Mills, McDonalds, etc...
The good news is that Rob Walton is neither the first nor the only chairman of a very large company to publically announce the need to phase out non-sustainable supply sources. During the last decade, and in particular, the last two years, scores of major international corporate business CEOs such as the heads of Unilever, Coca Cola, General Mills, McDonalds, Proctor & Gamble, Kellogg's and many others have made similar pledges. In addition, many of these companies have come together under the Consumer Goods Forum to drive change through their zero net deforestation commitment, pledged in December 2010. These businesses fear a future of resource depletion and threatened commodity production unless action is taken now to move toward efficiently produced, cost effective, sustainable supplies for their product lines. We are past the point where our planet can meet all of the food, energy and commodity demands for our 6 billion inhabitants. Of even greater concern is that by 2050 our expected population of over 9 billion will require three times the resources that are currently available to meet anticipated needs. For all smart business leaders that rely on Nature's bounty, this model is quickly becoming less a matter of choice and more a matter of future economic survival.
