Merchandise for People and Planet

Our Aspiration

Setting requirements and specifications for what Walmart sells and how it is sourced.

Walmart establishes sourcing requirements and product specifications that help address environmental and social priorities across product categories, including responsible sourcing, product safety, sustainable chemistry, deforestation- and conversion-free (DCF) sourcing, animal welfare, and food safety.
Standards are tailored to product categories and priority commodities, with examples including the Forest Policy, Seafood Policy, Ethical Charter for produce, Responsible Sourcing program, and supplier standards that define expectations for how products are sourced.

Encouraging suppliers to adopt, scale and disclose more sustainable practices, from basic to better to best.

Walmart works with suppliers to encourage adoption, implementation, scaling, and disclosure of more sustainable practices through initiatives such as Project Gigaton, Joint Sustainability Plans, supplier reporting, best-practice summits, Supplier Academy, and other collaborative programs.
Engagement spans climate, nature, waste, responsible recruitment, traceability, worker well-being, sustainable chemistry, local sourcing, and supplier capability building.
Supplier engagement also supports market access and capacity building for small producers and emerging suppliers.

Leading and contributing to consortia and collaborative initiatives to promote best practices.

Walmart collaborates with industry groups, multi-stakeholder initiatives, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders to help address systemic sustainability challenges.
Collaborative efforts support best practices, responsible recruitment, worker safety, traceability, conservation, circularity, sustainable commodity production, and responsible sourcing.
Collaboration advances common standards, shared measurement approaches, transparency tools, and implementation across supply chains.

Support for public policies that align with our business priorities including sustainable supply chain priorities.

Walmart supports public policies that align with its business priorities, including sustainable supply chain priorities.
The company also participates in collaborative advocacy efforts that promote responsible recruitment, worker dignity, sustainable production, and other relevant priorities.

Providing information about and access to more sustainable choices.

Walmart helps customers access more sustainable choices by providing information, product options, and services that support more sustainable purchasing decisions.
Customer-facing initiatives include offerings that encourage reuse and circularity, healthier choices, affordable nutrition, recycling, food waste reduction, and access to products designed to reduce environmental impacts where applicable.

Investing in enablers of broader system change, including standards, transparency tools, and place-based initiatives.

Walmart invests in initiatives that enable broader system change by supporting standards, transparency tools, conservation, capacity building, research, and place-based initiatives.
Investments support worker well-being, responsible recruitment, regenerative agriculture, fisheries management, circularity, smallholder resilience, community capacity, and other efforts that contribute to more sustainable product value chains.
These investments complement Walmart's commercial activities by helping address broader social and environmental challenges across sourcing regions.

2025 marks the culmination of Walmart’s 20x25 Initiative, a ten-year effort to source 20 key commodities more sustainably by 2025. We have focused on fostering more sustainable commodity production, conserving high-value landscapes and seascapes, and supporting the well-being of the people who farm, fish, and otherwise produce commodities across global value chains.
Across these 20 commodities, Walmart applied the strategies described above, including setting sourcing standards, engaging suppliers to implement and report on more sustainable practices, collaborating through industry initiatives, and investing in place-based projects and broader enabling solutions.
Following the initiative’s conclusion, we continue to integrate these strategies and learnings into our approach to merchandising for people and planet and will continue to report on related efforts and progress through annual shared value reporting.