Does anyone have any idea what gave them such a conscience?
Not in a derisive way at all, but very often I feel that capitalism itself is a major obstruction to green things happening.
One signs petition after petition, but seeing a property as massive as Wal-Mart do something as extraordinarily innovative as this on its own initiative is almost unbelievable; developing such an infra-structure, or even getting the ball rolling as its termed, is a massive under-taking with close to general application as a model to any region.

Wal-Mart doing this won't just pressure their suppliers, such a system simply existing (and producers/suppliers aiding in compiling data) will spread it far beyond Wal-Mart. Competitor chains will use positive-image information ready-collected, and competing products without will surely be motivated.

But, assuming they do it right, and by the pedigree of the academic bodies involved, they'll do it as right as anyone can, the bare system (stripped of regional specifics etc.) will be valuable and usable to different economies, like Europe.

I can't stress the scale of this sort of thing. I've gone through 200~page doctoral theses that were *proposals* towards whole-life assessment systems for building materials in singular US states. Developing such a system that will function on presumably an international level, even before its 'filled' with data, I really think could push a global shift - so much of the hard work will be done and the benefit will be there to be earned on the down-hill run.