Walmart – Louisa Freeman – 2025

Summary

Louisa Freeman developed an engagement strategy for Walmart’s National Brand Suppliers to accelerate sustainable packaging transformation. 

Goals

As an EDF Climate Corps Fellow at Walmart, Louisa Freeman was brought on to advance Walmart’s sustainable packaging decarbonization roadmap by developing a strategic engagement plan for National Brand Suppliers. Her mission was to accelerate the transition to more sustainable packaging by leveraging the influence of national brands to drive innovation and category-wide shifts, ultimately supporting Walmart’s progress toward its plastics and packaging goals.

Solutions

During her fellowship, Louisa analyzed Walmart’s packaging data to identify high-footprint categories with strong National Brand presence, high product volume, and clear opportunities for improvement. She utilized tools like e-Halo and collaborated with stakeholder teams to map material hotspots, prioritizing categories based on supplier readiness and alignment with Walmart’s Beyond 2025 strategy. Louisa consolidated this data and filtered for high-impact opportunities, categorizing them under four strategic pathways: increasing recycled content, reducing virgin plastic, substituting materials, and exploring reuse/refill models. This targeted framework allowed Louisa to focus on high-impact opportunities and develop tailored engagement strategies with key National Brands, creating a roadmap for supplier collaboration that could drive meaningful packaging changes across entire product categories.

Potential Impact

If implemented, the engagement strategy could standardize sustainable packaging designs, boost adoption of plastic alternatives and refill solutions, and reduce unnecessary materials across multiple categories. By harnessing the resources and market share of leading National Brands, Walmart could catalyze industry-wide shifts and measurable impact, accelerating sustainable packaging transformation at scale.