Leading sustainability & building green supply chain
SHANGHAI, Sept. 14 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Walmart Global Sourcing today held an awards ceremony honoring outstanding suppliers at the U.S. Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo with the aim to recognize their performance in energy efficiency improvement. Meanwhile, Walmart reiterated its objective from the 2008 Beijing Sustainability Summit, which is to establish a global green supply chain responsible for environmental and social development.
In response to the challenge of global climate change, and to build a world-leading sustainable supply chain, Mr. Mike Duke, President and CEO of Walmart Stores, Inc., committed at the Beijing 2008 Sustainability Summit to enhance collaboration with Chinese suppliers for energy efficiency improvement and natural resources consumption reduction, as well as to cooperate with 200 top suppliers and factories in China to improve energy efficiency by 20% by 2012.
Therefore, Walmart Global Sourcing launched this China Supplier Energy Efficiency Improvement Project in 2009, which aims to help suppliers improve energy efficiency and reduce energy costs, thereby enabling the enterprises to improve business competitiveness and sustainability. Walmart Global Sourcing tracks suppliers' progress by conducting regular review and professional assessment. All the enterprises that were recognized in this ceremony achieved significant energy saving in the project. Loftex China Ltd, Intex Industries (Xiamen) Co. Ltd., Xinlong Footwear Co., Ltd win the Award of Excellence in the Wal-Mart Energy Efficiency Program while Bburago Precision Mould (Dongguan) Ltd. wins the Award of Sustainability Pioneer, and Shanghai Ding Feng Plastic Co., Ltd, True Manufacturing Jiashan Plant, Hayco Enterprises (Shenzhen) Limited and other 5 enterprises win the Award of Merit in the program. Among these enterprises, third-party energy services company audit data shows that at Dongguan Bojie Lights Co., Ltd. each retrofitted injection molding machine reduces power consumption by about 50% on average, and at Eazy Enterprise Co. Ltd., compared with the original diesel heating system, a heat pump as the heat source for hot water supply saves about 57% of energy consumption.
More than 100 guests were present at the awarding ceremony including Eduardo Castro-Wright, Vice Chairman of Walmart Stores, Inc.; Ed Kolodzieski, Executive VP of Walmart Global Sourcing; Wan Ling Martello, Executive VP of Walmart Global eCommerce; Sam Dunn, Andrea Thomas & Simona Visztova, SVP of Walmart Global; Ken Lanshe, Rajan Kamalanathan & Mark Green, VPs of Walmart Global Sourcing; Scott A. Price, President & CEO of Walmart Asia; Han Wenke, Director General of Energy Research Institution of National Development and Reform Commission; Peng Sizhen, Deputy Director General of The Administrative Center for China's Agenda 21; Zhang Xinsheng, Deputy Director General of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce; Huang Yaocheng, Deputy Director of Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination; Dennis Bracy, CEO of US-China Clean Energy Forum; Martin Alintuck, President & CEO of the USA Pavilion at Shanghai Expo and Walmart Supplier representatives.
Eduardo Castro-Wright, Vice Chairman of Walmart Stores, Inc, addressed in the ceremony, “Sustainability, which is one of the global strategic goals of Walmart, has been integrated into each aspect of Walmart's operation and supply chain management. We hope we can build a sustainable supply chain together with our suppliers by fulfilling the goal set at the 2008 Beijing Sustainability Summit as well as the goal declared recently that is by 2015, to reduce the emission of greenhouse gas of the whole global supply chain by 20 million metric tons. We hope the best cases shared by all these outstanding suppliers will encourage and inspire more enterprises to obtain the benefits of energy saving and emission reduction.”
Walmart Global Sourcing assists suppliers in implementing energy efficiency improvement mainly in the following three aspects: First, to help the enterprise to build up an energy efficiency consciousness by its competition improvement which benefits from integrating the energy efficiency concept into the process of product design, procurement, manufacturing, and service; second, to transform the energy efficiency demand into the motivation for technological innovation, and to encourage technology innovation as well as to develop clean and creative production; last, to regard the goal of rational use of energy as a part of enterprise' social responsibility, and by fulfilling social responsibility including environmental protection, resource conservation, production safety, and business ethics to achieve sustainability of all aspects including enterprise, society and environment.
Since the implementation of China Supplier Energy Efficiency Improvement Projects, Walmart Global Sourcing has organized three relevant seminars with suppliers involved, from which benefits more than 300 suppliers in various industries covered toys, furniture, footwear, apparel, and electronics. By means of conducting rapid EE opportunity assessments and organizing several technical seminars, trainings and round-tables for experience sharing, Walmart Global Sourcing helps factories identify opportunity for energy saving and put action plan into practice, which has made a considerable achievement. Compared to 2007, 135 factories participating in the project reached more than 10% energy efficiency improvement with 80 million KWh of energy saved, which is equivalent to 70 thousand metric tons of carbon dioxide emission (Calculation of this figure was assisted by Business Social Responsibility), or one-year's carbon emission of about 12 thousand normally driving cars.
Meanwhile, Walmart Global Sourcing provides suppliers and their enterprises with technical training in cooperation with Business Social Responsibility (BSR), sets up a project implementation platform by working together with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and coordinates site visits for energy experts to help enterprises actively and effectively carry out energy-saving technological retrofits.
Ken Lanshe, VP of Walmart Global Sourcing, spoke, “As a critical segment in Walmart's global business structure, Walmart Global Sourcing has been committed to the implementation of Walmart's sustainable development strategy and the building of Walmart's global green supply chain. Retailers and suppliers are two important partners in the supply chain; therefore they are inseparable. To establish a responsible and sustainable supply chain to provide the common customers with satisfactory services and products, joint efforts and cooperation from both retailers and suppliers are needed. We strive to help our suppliers enhance their energy efficiency performance and supply more high-quality lower-priced environment-friendly products to consumers.”
Dr. Han Wenke, Director General of Energy Research Institution of NDRC, said: “As the No. 1 on the Fortune 500, Walmart partners with Chinese suppliers to carry out the Energy Efficiency project, which helps factories save energy and become more competitive. It is meaningful for achieving the national 11th five year's goal of energy conservation and building a resource conserving, environment-friendly society. Meanwhile, the improvement of energy efficiency in the manufacturing section of products exported from China has a positive impact on global resource conservation and Climate Change mitigation. We hope that there would be more and more national and international companies to follow Walmart's path, to make contribution for energy saving and mitigating the Global Climate Change.”
A winner of the award, representative of Loftex China Ltd., said: "Over the last two years, Walmart provided training for us related to the improvement of energy efficiency, sent energy-saving specialists to our enterprise to provide instructions, helped us in building the concept of 'everyone saves', and implemented 177 energy efficiency programs. It enables us to make big progress in energy saving and consumption reduction. We have invested over 4 million RMB for energy efficiency retrofits. Since 2007, we've made a return of 28.139 million RMB including 92,0000m3 of water, steam and power equivalent to more than 20 million KWh.
Sustainability is Walmart's long-term focus, and Walmart has committed to three major goals: to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; to sell products that sustain the world's resources and the environment. Complying actively with China energy-relevant policy, Walmart is continuously driving the green supply chain building by encouraging enterprises to conduct technical innovation and upgrading, trying to integrate environment protection and social standard into the global sourcing system, for a sustainability supply chain that is beneficial to all parties including Walmart, suppliers and the community.
Walmart in China
Walmart entered the China market in 1996 with its first store opened in Shenzhen. Walmart Global Sourcing was established in 2002 with its headquarter in Shenzhen. Currently Walmart has supercenters, Sam's Clubs, and neighborhood stores in China. Since its establishment 14 years ago, Walmart's donation to China charity has reached more than 60 million RMB. Walmart is also honored with awards including "Best Employer", "Best Community", "Supplier's Best Retailer", and "Most Admired Company". Please visit www.Walmartchina.com for more information.
Walmart Global Sourcing
Walmart Global Sourcing was founded in Shenzhen in 2002. It is responsible for sourcing for all global Walmart Stores. Currently Walmart Global Sourcing runs its offices world widely including Shanghai, Fujian, Korea, Indonesia, India, Dubai, Bangladesh and Pakistan etc. It works with thousands of suppliers and factories to source hundreds of thousands types of merchandise. With its focus on social responsibility, Walmart Global Sourcing provides suppliers with the information and trainings related to ethical sourcing standard, sustainability and energy efficiency.
