Walmart, the world's largest retailer, will miss a series of plastic packaging related goals for 2025, including cuts to overall use of resin and increasing the use of recycled content.
The Bentonville, Ark.-based company had a goal of cutting virgin plastic use by 15 percent in private-brand packaging globally by this year, using 2020 numbers as a baseline.
But the retailer, in a recently released environmental, social and governance (ESG) report, actually increased virgin plastic use in that category by 6 percent in calendar year 2023.
"While we have made significant progress towards our ambitious 2025 goals for recycled content, virgin plastic reduction and packaging recyclability, we expect to fall short of achieving these goals by 2025," the company said.
Walmart said that the company's inability to meet the goal relates to sales growth, and the company actually was able to reduce what is described as "our overall plastic packaging intensity (weight of plastic per net sales dollar)."
Walmart, in its latest environmental report, also indicated a goal of having 17 percent of global private-label plastic packaging made from post-consumer recycled content this year. But that number stood at 8 percent in calendar year 2023, up 1 percent from calendar year 2021.
Walmart also wanted 20 percent of private-brand plastic packaging in North America to be made from post-consumer resin this year. That number stood at 8 percent for 2023, also up 1 percent over time.
The company's goal of having all global private-brand packaging recyclable, reusable or industrially compostable by 2025 was at 68 percent in 2023.
"While we continue to work towards reducing waste, progress depends on many factors outside our control, including emergence and scalability of innovative more-recyclable materials, public policy for materials management systems, infrastructure development (especially to support recyclable and compostable materials), and societal behavior change," Walmart said in reporting its expected recycling goals shortfalls.
The retailer also indicated 81 percent of the company's global private-brand plastic packaging was designed for recycling in 2023, up from 71 percent in 2021. There was no specific goal listed in the report for that category.
Walmart further reported recycling 280 million pounds of plastic films and rigids globally during 2023 from both operations and material returned by customers.