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Wal-mart's push to whip it's suppliers into a green frenzy has been getting a lot of press recently:

Walmart has just unveiled its new Sustainability Index, a project that's been in the works for more than a year, but which is -- finally, after much anticipation and more than a little handwringing by industry, activists, and others -- part of the public discourse. The advance stories over the past few days have been amped up to the point of breathlessness, involving adjectives like "huge" (perhaps) and "audacious" (probably), with one story suggesting the Index will "shake the world" (um, no comment). Such hyperbole is understandable: any green commitment that Walmart makes is potentially a big deal. But now that reality has hit, it's time to take a more sober assessment of what's really going on here.

But what is it, exactly?

The story in brief: Walmart's Sustainability Index is geared toward creating a way to gather sustainability information about companies and, eventually, products sold in Walmart stores. The Index will result from a set of 15 questions Walmart is asking of its 60,000 or so suppliers. (You can download the questions here in this .pdf file.) It has asked for responses by October for its U.S. suppliers, later on for those elsewhere.

The 15 questions are grouped into four buckets: energy and climate, material efficiency, natural resources, and "people and community." That last category is particularly clever, as it allows the company to demonstrate that its concern lies beyond environmental issues to the broader arena of sustainability, which includes social issues, though the five questions included in that bucket barely scratch the surface of this topic. For example, they don't address most worker issues, like wages, health care, and the right to air grievances, among many other topics generally included in this arena.

The analysis continues both from Greenbiz and from WorldChanging.com, which had this to say:

Do such shortcomings render the Walmart Sustainability Index as greenwash? No. This is a solid first effort. It's important to note that over the past year, Walmart engaged some 20 universities, a handful of environmental activist groups, associations like Business for Social Responsibility, many of its key suppliers, and a small army of consultants. Patagonia's iconoclastic founder, Yvon Chounaird, has played a role. It's gone through a great deal of thinking and more than a few iterations. This was not some slap-dash effort.

Interesting, eh? Now, if Wal-mart can get on the union bandwagon and pay it's employees a living wage, we might have something here...

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