By partnering with EcoCart, Walmart has become the first major Canadian retailer to offer carbon-neutral last-mile delivery for its customers’ eCommerce orders, including online grocery delivery.
Shoppers are increasingly aligning their purchasing decisions with progressive values, and minimizing the environmental impact of delivery has been top of mind for many as eCommerce options proliferate. Consumer spending increasingly shifts toward online delivery. To lead on the sustainability front, retailers need to provide zero impact delivery options through carbon offsetting options and alternative modes of transport. Combined with the environmental impacts of packaging waste and transportation, shipping and logistics are poised to become a major battleground for differentiating customer experience.
As an industry leader and taking charge within this impact-focused landscape, Walmart is tapping sustainable tech firm EcoCart to calculate carbon emissions created from the retailer’s online orders as they are sold, shipped, and delivered. EcoCart’s novel solution allows retailers to measure their emissions and environmental cost of doing business and then purchase an exact amount of carbon-offset credits necessary to negate those emissions created. EcoCart will independently validate and calculate Walmart Canada’s e-commerce platform’s emissions and source and vet high-quality projects to fund with the purchased offsets.
Walmart Canada will support a robust portfolio of Canadian-based green initiatives that protect forests, enable composting and waste diversion, aid refrigerant management, turn biomass into fuel and work proactively and productively toward other impactful sustainability goals. Walmart is committed to achieving Zero Emissions globally without offsets by 2040, and EcoCart will provide the Canadian arm of the global retailer with quarterly impact and emissions reporting, allowing Walmart Canada to track and set benchmarks for its third-party carrier partners as well.
In just its first year, the last-mile initiative is projected to offset an estimated 25,000 tons of emissions, the equivalent of planting around a million trees or taking 5,000 cars off the road. In addition to the last-mile project, Walmart Canada is transitioning its entire delivery fleet to alternative fuel-powered vehicles by 2028. It has also made one of the largest reservations for Tesla’s electric vehicle semi-trucks in Canada.
