Jewelry
Love, Earth jewelry lineAs the world’s largest jewelry retailer, Walmart can have a significant, positive impact on the way jewelry goes from mine to market, including refining, polishing and cutting, and all the way through to manufacturing. Around the globe we are working with our suppliers to develop sustainable solutions to product packaging. We developed an online packaging scorecard to gather information on suppliers’ product packaging and help our buyers make more informed purchasing decisions. Goals- Achieve 10 percent traceability of all diamonds, gold and silver in jewelry sold in Walmart U.S. from mines, refineries and manufacturers, meeting ethical sourcing standards and responsible mining criteria by 2010.
- All jewelry packaging in the U.S. will be made more sustainable, and we will convert all pallets and all boxes to recycled materials by 2010.
Objectives and Actions- As a member of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, we are identifying a diamond mine, a gold mine, a manufacturer, and working with a third-party verification company to produce new products in environmentally and socially conscious ways and to test more transparent supply chain practices.
Traceability:- We are working to make our supply chain practices for jewelry more transparent.
- In July 2008, we introduced our “Love, Earth ” jewelry line, which features 100 percent traceable gold and silver jewelry. This jewelry line:
- is available at all Walmart stores, Sam’s Club locations and at www.walmart.com.
- is the first time a major retailer has set standards for third-tier suppliers (mining industry) and established a line of jewelry that has 100 percent “traceability” – the ability to track the products from mining and refining to manufacturing and distribution.
- In November 2008, we expanded the line to include 100 percent traceable diamonds available in 500 Walmart stores across the U.S.
- We have achieved traceability for more than 30 percent of the gold jewelry sold at Sam’s Club and more than 10 percent of the gold jewelry sold at Walmart.
Packaging:- We have revised our goal to focus on improving the score jewelry packaging receives in our packaging scorecard. Since we outlined our original goal, we have learned more about jewelry packaging options and have decided that committing to use only biodegradable bags is not the best way to move our sustainability efforts forward because of concerns from our environmental partners about biodegradability. Therefore, in addition to focusing on packaging scores, we:
- are committed to eliminating the majority of jewelry pallets in 2008, and to date we have eliminated 91 percent. The remaining 9 percent is made from recycled materials.
- remain committed to converting all boxes to recycled materials by 2010, and already at Sam’s Club, 100 percent of jewelry gift boxes are made from recycled materials.
Click the links below to add this entry to social networking sites.
|
|
|