If you want greener goods, do you have to flash the cash? Not necessarily, Wal-Mart’s director of sustainability reckons. Says the fella on Reuters:

“Bad quality products create waste, and so having tighter standards on the social side, on the environmental side and on the quality side will reduce waste,” Matt Kistler, Wal-Mart’s senior vice president of sustainability, said in an interview.[...]

“We are looking at a very small amount of dollars and the savings in the supply chain that we are finding because of sustainability in some cases will more than offset the incremental costs of what we are paying for a better quality item.”

Being the behemoth that it is, Wal-Mart has to do very little to have a big impact. It’s mandating its suppliers cut back packaging by five percent by 2013 and saved itself a shedload of cash in the process. Let’s hope some of that gets passed onto consumers – what better way to stoke enthusiasm for sustainability?

Tags: Consumer, prices, supermarket, supply chain, wal-mart