Walmart Forests Survey

Since the Forests survey isn’t live yet, we wanted to give you the opportunity to review the questions in advance so you can prepare. Screenshots of the survey are below.

The Forests survey is only for suppliers of Private Brand products to Walmart Inc., which includes suppliers of Private Brand products to any banner (e.g. Walmart de Mexico, Sam’s Club, or Seiyu) in any global retail market where Walmart Inc. does business. If you sell a product that contains palm oil or pulp & paper, you will complete the Forests palm oil and/or pulp & paper survey for each retail market where you do business with Walmart Inc., or one of its banners. All private brand suppliers are asked to report progress.

The opportunity to report for the 2019 reporting cycle will begin October 7th and end November 15th, 2019 in your Sustainability Portal Account (visit the WalmartSustainabilityHub.com to sign in). You are expected to report 12 months of recent data as part of the survey, and the recommended time frame we’d like you to report data for is October 1, 2018 – September 30, 2019.

Suppliers of Walmart’s private brand products which contain palm oil should plan to complete this survey for each retail market where you do business with Walmart Inc. or one of its banners.

Walmart’s Ask: In accordance with our policy, we ask our global private brand suppliers to:
Source and use palm oil in accordance with the principles and criteria of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (Mass Balance and/or Segregated supply chain systems), or equivalent standards, in 100% of Walmart private brand products. Many food products have palm oil listed as “vegetable oil,” and in non-food products palm oil can have over 200 alternate names. If you are unsure what ingredients are derived from palm oil, please learn more here.
Maintain (and make available upon request) comprehensive records about the volume of crude palm oil and verification of sustainable palm oil used in Walmart private brand products on an annual basis, as well as disclosing the origin (geographic region, country, state/province, plantation, and trader).
Please note that we no longer accept the use of Palmtrace credits.

For more information on Walmart’s palm oil and pulp/paper requirements, please review our Deforestation Policy.

Suppliers of Walmart’s private brand products which contain pulp and paper should plan to complete this survey for each retail market where you do business with Walmart Inc. or one of its banners.

Walmart’s Ask: In accordance with our policy, we ask our global private brand suppliers of products containing pulp and paper from wood fiber to:
Proactively conduct risk assessments to understand forest fiber sources and species used, and transition supply away from higher risk sources to certified and/or recycled sources.
Source virgin fiber from sources certified to internationally recognized forest, fiber, and chain-of-custody certification standards. We recognize Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI) and Program for Forest Endorsement (PEFC) certification programs, with preference for FSC certification – especially in high priority countries – when it is available in quantities, performance characteristics and prices that meet our suppliers’ needs. Alternatively, the use of recycled fiber for pulp and paper products is acceptable under our policy.
Work to increase the use of recycled content where feasible.
Maintain (and make available upon request) comprehensive records about the volume of pulp and paper products and certification status of fiber and recycled content used in Walmart private brand products, as well as the country of origin and wood species used to make the fiber.

Please note that “high priority countries” are as defined by the Consumer Goods Forum as Indonesia (fiber source), Malaysia (wood chips source), China (fiber source and trader), Thailand (fiber source), and Colombia (fiber source).

For more information on Walmart’s palm oil and pulp/paper requirements, please review our Deforestation Policy.