Wal-Mart's Move Towards a Sustainability Index

In case you haven't heard about it yet, Wal-Mart is embarking on a project to develop a sustainability index for its suppliers. At this point they are just gathering data and are far from having an index. The article link says Wal-Mart plans to make the index available to the public. They have a webcast of the meeting available on their site. This index should eventually have a huge impact on supply chain. As I've told my students, if you want to run a sustainable company, you need to ensure that members of your supply chain have sustainability in mind as well. As a start up or small company, you don't have a lot of power to influence your suppliers to change their ways and you might not have a lot of options to move to another supplier. But if you do, your best bet is to follow larger companies that are moving towards sustainability and use their suppliers.