Wal-Mart to Sell Only Concentrated Laundry Detergent

Wal-Mart to Sell Only Concentrated Laundry Detergent

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.

From the article:

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.