Walmart Missed Four Packaging Targets. The Number It Reports First Is Not One Of Them.
Walmart did not meet any of the four 2025 targets it set for private brand packaging, according to its FY2026 ESG Report. Global private brand packaging that is recyclable, reusable, or industrially compostable came in at 64.3% against a 100% goal, down from 66.1% a year earlier and 68.2% the year before that. Virgin plastic packaging finished 4.12% above the FY2021 baseline against a goal of a 15% reduction. Post-consumer recycled content reached an estimated 10.7% of global private brand plastic packaging against a 17% goal, and 12.0% in North America against a 20% goal. Walmart published the report on July 29. Packaging Dive reported the packaging results on August 6.
The Packaging Number Walmart Reports First Is Not One Of Its Four Targets
The first packaging figure Walmart gives in its own Waste and Circularity summary is 81.1%, the share of global private brand plastic packaging designed for recycling, and it is not one of the four 2025 targets the report tracks. It sits ahead of the 64.3% recyclability result, and the two cannot be compared directly. The 81.1% covers plastic alone and measures a design attribute. The 64.3% covers all materials and measures an outcome, assessed against the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s recyclability definition, which the report’s methodology section names as Walmart’s standard. Design for recycling is a specification decision. Recyclability under the Foundation’s definition also turns on whether collection and reprocessing operate at scale in the markets where a package is sold, which no supplier controls on its own. Walmart is not currently listed among signatories to the Foundation’s 2030 Plastics Agenda for Business and previously exited the U.S. Plastics Pact, according to Packaging Dive, while continuing to measure itself against the Foundation’s definition.
Walmart has published a list of materials it treats as difficult to recycle. In announcing its Circular Connector platform in 2022, the company drew on its Recycling Playbook to name materials that could disqualify a packaging innovation from that platform: metallized films, multilayer materials, PVC and PVDC, EPS and PS, PETG in rigid plastic packaging, oxo-degradable materials, undetectable carbon black, colored PET, and biodegradable additives in petroleum-based plastics. That list sets eligibility for the platform. Walmart has not published it as the standard behind the design-for-recycling figure.
Recycled Content Is The Only Metric That Moved Up
PCR content rose to an estimated 12.0% of North America private brand plastic packaging and 10.7% globally in FY2026, from 8.2% and 7.6% the year before. Both figures moved more between FY2025 and FY2026 than they did between FY2024 and FY2025. Walmart announced the 2025 goals at its annual supplier forum in February 2019, expecting them to affect more than 30,000 SKUs, and committed then to at least 20% post-consumer recycled content in private brand packaging. The goal table now carries two PCR lines, 20% for North America and 17% globally, and both measure plastic packaging where the 2019 commitment described private brand packaging generally. Increasing PCR is one of three principles the report names as guiding packaging design, alongside eliminating packaging not required by law or necessary for safe handling, labeling, transportation, or storage, and designing packaging for recycling. On PCR specifically, Walmart describes its approach as incorporating recycled content where performance, quality, supply, cost, and regulatory requirements can be met.
The Virgin Plastic Figure Includes Packaging Walmart Buys Itself
Walmart’s private brand plastic packaging calculation includes all primary private brand plastic packaging and operational packaging that Walmart purchases directly, including single-use and reusable plastic bags, according to the methodology section of the report. The 4.12% figure is therefore not a clean read on supplier-produced packaging, because Walmart’s own bags and operational materials sit inside the same denominator. Walmart reports that its virgin plastic packaging intensity, measured as weight per net sales dollar, has declined for three consecutive years even as the absolute figure rose. The year-over-year path runs 8.17% over baseline in FY2024, 4.11% in FY2025, and 4.12% in FY2026, so the overage roughly halved and then held flat. Walmart also aligned all plastic measurements to a fiscal year basis in FY2026 and did not restate its baseline or prior-year plastics data. Among the trade-offs the company says shape these results are cost, regulatory requirements, recycled material availability, evolving supplier portfolios, and changes in packaging formats that are “not yet recyclable at scale.”
The Reported Numbers Rest On Supplier Submissions, With Estimates For The Rest
Walmart calculates private brand packaging by weight using supplier responses to a survey or data submitted through its web-based packaging compliance system. Where a supplier did not complete the survey, did not enter data, or provided unusable data, the report says Walmart applies proxy estimates, calculated from survey participation as a percentage of private brand net sales combined with known packaging data. How2Recycle reporting is excluded from proxy influence. Suppliers reporting through the compliance system are asked to keep their data current throughout the year, and survey respondents were instructed to use their most recent 12 months of available data, matching the prior year’s reporting period where they had submitted before. Private brand suppliers should consider what that means for a non-response. Declining to submit does not remove a supplier from the measurement. It substitutes an estimate built from other suppliers’ data, and that estimate is what gets reported.
The Report Covers Private Brand Only, And Marketplace Is Excluded By Definition
None of these numbers describe national brand packaging sold at Walmart. Walmart’s ESG reporting also defines its own scope as Walmart Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries, excluding all platforms and marketplaces unless otherwise noted, which places third-party Marketplace listings outside these figures entirely. A 3P seller’s packaging is not counted against these targets and does not appear in the compliance system described above. The exclusion is a reporting boundary and carries no regulatory meaning.
State EPR Programs Assign The Private Brand Obligation To Retailers
Circular Action Alliance, the state-approved producer responsibility organization for packaging in California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington, states in its producer guidance that a retailer with private label products using covered materials is an obligated producer. Producer fee obligations began in Oregon on July 1, 2025 and in Colorado in January 2026, and are scheduled to begin in California in January 2027, according to CAA. California’s draft program plan describes eco-modulation as using incentives for recyclable packaging types and disincentives for materials that are difficult to recycle. That plan is not approved, and the program faces active legal challenge. As of August 21, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors was seeking a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of SB 54 as part of a suit led by 17 state attorneys general, and a separate NAW case against Oregon’s law went to trial in July and awaits a ruling, according to Packaging Dive. Private brand suppliers should ask Walmart’s private brands team where the producer obligation sits for their specific items and states before assuming it follows the packaging data they already submit.
Nearly Every Great Value Package Is Being Retooled Through 2027
Walmart announced a full redesign of Great Value on April 15, 2026, covering close to 10,000 items in the brand’s first complete refresh in more than a decade. Scott Morris, senior vice president of private brands for Walmart U.S., said the rollout would take roughly 18 to 24 months, beginning with salty snacks in May and moving category by category through cereals, cream cheese, and sour cream. Morris also said the products themselves are not changing. That timeline places the artwork rollout inside the fiscal years Walmart will report on next, and suppliers reworking Great Value packaging during the window should consider whether any structural change moves with the graphics change. The report cites one structural change already underway: label-free packaging for Great Value 40-pack bottled water, which Walmart reported launched in three distribution centers in 2026 with plans to scale.
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