Walmaret- Corporate Social Responsiblity- Bradon Kelly

Where do people go when they are looking to purchase something, but are unsure which store to go to? Where do people go for last minute Christmas gifts? Where do people go to complete all their shopping in one convenient location? Wal-Mart! Wal-Mart! Wal-Mart!

Ever since before Wal-Mart opened its doors to the public in 1962, founder Sam Walton’s focus was to get a higher-volume of sales by selling products at lower prices, and to pass the savings onto the customers. To this day Wal-Mart’s focus is still to provide quality products to the customer at the lowest prices possible.

Wal-Mart is a discount department/warehouse store chain is the 3^rd largest corporation in the world, the biggest private employer, and is the largest retail business in the world. There are currently 8500 stores operating in 15 countries, and over 2.2 million people employed with them. Since it’s establishment, the company has made a revenue of over 446 billion dollars.

Wal-Mart is a huge company with huge responsibilities, and a large ecological footprint,  so they have implemented many goals and guidelines in order to become a more sustainable company.  It’s main focuses are on the Environment, People, Ethical Sourcing, and the Community.

The environment is a key aspect when it comes to a business being corporately responsible. In order to reduce their impact on the environment, Wal-Mart is reducing waste, to decrease the amount of waste going to landfills. 10000 tonnes of organic waste was diverted from the landfill in 2011.

In order to get closer to reaching their goal of being supplied with 100% renewable energy, they invested 2 million dollars to test how well solar power and energy could be harnessed.

In Milton, Wal-Mart installed an 80-foot tall wind turbine to help generate power for the store. It is expected to produce around 35000 kilowatt hours per year.

One of the major ways Wal-Mart diverts waste from the landfill was by introducing the Ecolo-Vial. The Ecolo-Vial is a medicine vial that is 100 percent recyclable, used in the stores pharmacy.  These vials use 53% less packaging than the original ones, and eliminate the use of over 100000 plastic bags, which the vials were previously shipped in.

These are only a few of the procedures implemented by Wal-Mart to become a more corporately responsible and sustainable business. If a big company like that is practising corporately responsible methods, it should pave the way for smaller businesses to follow.

http://www.walmartcsr.ca/images/pdfs/CSR_E.pdf