 |
Wal-Mart to sell only concentrated laundry detergent |
6 Comments |
| By Matt Mayer in Business, Green Living, Green Products | September 28, 2007 | ||
It’s been a busy week for the happy smile, but Wal-Mart released a press release stating that they are going to start selling laundry detergent in concentrated amounts only.
Wal-Mart expects to sell only concentrated detergent in all of its U.S.
stores by early May 2008 — more than 800 million units over the next three
years. The transition will occur in waves beginning in the Southern region
in October, extending to the North and Midwest by February and finishing in
East coast states in April 2008. (I assume this should be 2009 but it was like this in the article.)The commitment will save more than 400 million gallons of water, more
than 95 million pounds of plastic resin and more than 125 million pounds of
cardboard. For water alone, this is the equivalent of 100 million
individual showers. Since approximately 25 percent of the liquid laundry
detergent sold in the United States is sold through Wal-Mart stores, the
potential savings in natural resources through the entire retail industry
could be four times as much.
It’s great to see them leading the charge on this issue, which has been one that many environmentalists have championed.
If you click over to the article you’ll see a brief mention of the bigger impact of this change, which is how the manufacturers will change their production line and won’t have much room left to produce the current products.
Partnering closely with its suppliers, Wal-Mart made the
decision to offer only concentrated detergent, and leading manufacturers
began transforming their facilities to accommodate this request, leaving
less capacity for old-fashioned detergents with high water content. This
encouraged other retailers to move toward selling only the concentrated version of liquid detergents.
This is obviously great because that means that the manufacturers might as well just stop making the non-concentrated versions and the environmental savings will trickle down to all the other retailers.
Loading ...
Steve Balogh said,
I think that the biggest impact from this decision is the reduction in weight of the freight as it’s shipped. The water weight of 400 million gallons is [8.33 lbs x 400 m =] 3.33 billion lbs, or 1.66 million tons. Think about how much less fuel will have to be burned shipping these items across the US.
I like that it will force the manufacturers to change their product, think of the energy, fuel and material savings if all detergent became concentrated.
Matt Mayer said,
According to the article it would seem the manufacturers are moving in the direction of only selling concentrated products. The article mentions how little line space will be left for the current “normal” products. And why would manufacturers want to keep producing the ones with water when they can effectively cut their production in half by going with all concentrated products?
Steve Balogh said,
yeah, savings for everyone, it is a no-brainer.
Troy said,
I am so happy to see this. Now if we could get the supermarket chains like Safeway and HarrisTeeter to quit quit quit carrying those huge sized detergents that are mostly water anyway. What a waste of fuel to transport those heavy containers to the stores! This is a no-brainer.
Charles said,
This is a money making deal for the detergent manufacturers and the consumer pays. Manufacturers get reduced costs (not passed on to us of course), and get the benefits of all those consumers who are not going to actually reduce their usage by 1/2 of the concentrate (they get to sell more). They are counting on consumers not making the transition correctly. The manufacturers are doing this on the guise of being green, what a joke. It’s a win / lose.
Poobah said,
Nice. It’s really an amazing coincidence that all the major detergent producers stumbled on to this incredible concentrated formula at the same time, which, coincidentally occured at the same time transport costs were going thru the roof. Of course, everybody will crow about green tech and how wonderful the reduced impact will be for us, the little ones, and inadvertantly forget to mention that they, the producers, once again make out big on fuel savings, and sell the exact same product for TWICE THE PRICE NOW. I’ve been forced to use concentrate for six months now as regular is gone, and my experience has been that it blows. Stuff that Tide regular used to laugh at (grass, dirt, etc stains) is now a project that requires two washes or a serious pre treat with Tide 2X, and I’m sure all the others are no different.
This sort of nonsense is the end result of people having been lulled into not using their own common sense and perspicacity to see the scam in front of them. I’ll bet the milk producers are working on a way to “concentrate” milk now. Hey, don’t laugh. In this societal climate, absolutely nothing (save people waking the hell up to the massive spin machine) would surprise me. Where the hell is the FTC? Oh yeah…on junkets with the corporo heads…
This message provided with green technology as no spotted owls were killed in the process of transmission (that we know of). Give me a freaking break.