Walmart has just unveiled its new Sustainability Index, a project that's been in the works for more than a year, but which is [now]...part of the public discourse... Like so many things related to both Walmart and sustainability, there is both more and less going on here than meets the eye... The Index will result from a set of 15 questions Walmart is asking of its 60,000 or so suppliers... The 15 questions are grouped into four buckets: energy and climate, material efficiency, natural resources, and "people and community." That last category...allows the company to demonstrate that its concern lies beyond environmental issues to the broader arena of sustainability, which includes social issues, though the five questions included in that bucket barely scratch the surface... As for the 15 questions...Taken together, they set a fairly middling bar... company is working to bring in other companies -- Best Buy, Costco, Kroger, and Target have been part of the conversation -- to adopt the Index, too... [also refers to Nike]