The company everyone loves to hate - Wal-Mart - has announced a new program to develop "green" standards and ratings for all the products it sells. So what does that mean for you? After all, you don't make t-shirts or dish soap? There is an amazing amount of print involved in product manufacturing, just beginning with labels and packaging. And much of it is considered part of the product itself. In the July 16 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart announced the new "green" ratings program. As part of an ongoing initiative to reduce energy consumption, cut waste, and introduce sustainable products, Wal-Mart will depend in large part on its 100,000 suppliers. Those suppliers will be asked to calculate and report the full environmental costs of making their products. And if they don't provide the info, they simply will fall out of the pack.

"Wal-Mart CEO, Mike Duke, asked the company's largest suppliers to provide details such as water use and Carbon dioxide emissions, by October. All suppliers eventually will have to answer a preliminary, 15-item questionnaire, covering waste generation, resource use, and community involvement."

This is a program that is in development and the standards, reporting mechanism, and "green" index are still being determined.

"The company's goal is to build what it terms a comprehensive sustainability index that measures the environmental impact of each product Wal-Mart sells. For example, an index might flag how much each contributes to global warming and if it contains wood harvested in ways that deplete natural stocks."

The company expects that the program will take as many as five or six years to get off the ground, but now is a good time to start thinking about how it might affect you.