Wal-Mart goes organic

Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope, who is a board member of the union-backed group Wal-Mart Watch that criticizes the retailer, said it is too soon to tell if Wal-Mart will deliver but that the impact could be good for the environment.

"I think the direction they've said is a positive direction. The question is, `Are they are going to go there strongly enough?'" Pope said.

Some of the new items will be seafood caught in the wild. Wal-Mart last month announced a plan to have all its wild-caught fish, which accounts for about a third of seafood sales, certified by the Marine Stewardship Council as caught in a sustainable way.

The London-based MSC, founded in 1997 as a venture of the conservation group World Wildlife Fund and global consumer products company Unilever, issues the certificates to let consumers know which fisheries avoid overfishing and use methods that don't damage the ocean environment.

Sustainability experts say what makes this program interesting is that Wal-Mart will work with its suppliers to get more fisheries around the globe certified by MSC, instead of just buying up the existing stock of certified fish.

CNBC VIDEO Wal-Mart goes posh March 22: CNBC reports on the new Wal-Mart store that has an expanded selection of high-end electronics, more fine jewelry, and hundreds of types of wine. CNBC

Wal-Mart says this means there will be more sustainable fish that will also be available to Wal-Mart's competitors, such as Whole Foods Market, which already sells about 18 MSC certified items, according to the MSC Web site. Wal-Mart plans to offer between 200 and 250 items.

The way Wal-Mart hatched the fish plan is typical of how it operates.

Peter Redmond, vice president and divisional merchandise manager in charge of deli and seafood, said he conceived the idea after meeting MSC board chairman Will Martin last fall. Wal-Mart and MSC worked out details and then Wal-Mart called in its 25 to 30 fish wholesalers in January to tell them it was switching to MSC certified seafood.

Wal-Mart developed a plan to work with its suppliers to encourage fisheries to adopt MSC practices. The plan includes barring its suppliers from switching fisheries in the first year to 18 months, giving the suppliers more reason to promote the changes.

"We don't want to walk away from a fishery just because it is in fairly poor shape or poor shape," Redmond said. "We want to try and recover that (non-certified) fishery to where it becomes a sustainable fishery. Our point being that if we just go for sustainable fisheries, it won't be enough at the end of the day unless we recover a lot of these that are in trouble now," he added.

The term fishery refers to a particular species of fish and the fleet that harvests them. Redmond said about 60 percent of the fisheries that Wal-Mart buys from now can be brought up to MSC standards within a year or two, and the remainder may need three to five years to change.

Redmond says the decision to go with sustainable fish came after Lee Scott launched the environmental policy last fall and fits Scott's maxim of "doing well by doing good".

"The environmental piece is a company (policy) plank. Secondly and probably the main reason is, when I look at seafood now and how many dollars it does now and how many dollars it's going to do in four years, I'm extremely concerned that that product is simply not going to be there."

"So we have to take the position that if I want to have hake five or six years from now, we as a company have to get involved and do something because I don't think it'll be there for us otherwise," Redmond said.

MORE FROM FOOD INC.

Food Inc. Section Front

Starbucks Via stirring discontent CNBC: Coke looking for the next real thing Burger King franchisees sue over $1 promotion McDonald’s to open 1,000 new locations in ’10 $5 footlongs turbocharge Subway Who’s your patty? Not McDonald’s Starbucks sees increase in spending, visits 7-Eleven is getting into the value wine business Pork still thriving despite swine flu scare Maine sours on lemonade with trace of alcohol Food Inc. Section Front   Add Food Inc. headlines to your news reader: