Walmart Outlines Sustainable Packaging Goals

Walmart has revealed several sustainable packaging goals for the coming years including a 33% reduction in the use of plastic bags.

As part of the retailer’s Zero Waste programme, the plastic bag reduction initiative will be implemented at each store by 2013, with the aim of a nine million decrease in plastic bag usage.

Walmart said that by September 2009 more than 1.3 million pounds of aluminum, 182 million pounds of plastic, 12.4 million pounds of office paper and nearly 19 million pounds of plastic hangers had been redirected from landfills.

The company has started recycling corrugated cardboard waste into pizza boxes, which it said diverts 8,600t of cardboard waste from landfills and saves approximately 125,000 trees.