Walmart & Avery Dennison Use Tech for Retail Sustainability

The United Nations has identified food waste as a US$1tn opportunity for the retail sector.

However, this opportunity can only be realised when there is collaboration and innovation across the value chain.

This collaboration and innovation could be epitomised by a partnership between Walmart and Avery Dennison, which is advancing the use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology in fresh categories that were previously not possible.

According to Walmart: "Addressing food waste and ensuring freshness are more important than ever for consumers, producers and retailers. This first to market solution is set to transform inventory processes and enhance associate and customer experiences across fresh departments – particularly bakery, meat and deli."

The retailer adds: "This is practical innovation, bringing RFID technology – once limited by temperature and moisture limitations - to new categories like protein and deli. This is technology connecting the physical and digital to reduce waste, improve labour efficiency, enhance consumer experiences and advance sustainability."

RFID technology in fresh departments

Walmart teams with packaging and containers manufacturer Avery Dennison to create and test sensor technology that brings RFID-enabled labels to the meat department.

The solution addresses an enduring challenge for food retailers of using RFID technology in high-moisture, cold environments like meat cases.

Avery Dennison brings the solution to Walmart, gives the retailer the ability to track inventory faster and more accurately, making sure products stay stocked and ready when customers want them.

The solution works for meat, bakery and deli products, gives employees digital use-by dates at their fingertips, boosts their ability to rotate products more efficiently and make smarter markdown decisions, helps cut down on unsold food.

Operational efficiencies for retailers

Leaders at Walmart and Avery Dennison are enthusiastic about the efficiencies and improvements that the RFID solution can bring to Walmart's 11,000-plus stores across the globe.

Christyn Keef, VP of Front End Transformation for Walmart US, says: "We believe technology should make things easier for our associates and our customers. By cuts down on manual work, we give our associates more time to focus on what really matters – helping our customers."

Julie Vargas, VP and GM of Avery Dennison Identification Solutions, says: "Supporting Walmart with first to market RFID innovation across multiple fresh food categories demonstrates our mutual commitment to people and the planet.

"By providing each item with its own digital identity, associates instantly know the freshness of the foods they are handling, enables better inventory management and results in less waste."

Julie adds: "This is a landmark moment for the industry and aligns with our own personal milestone as Avery Dennison celebrates 90 years of helping to solve some of the world's most complex challenges."

Sustainability goals and industry impact

The collaboration also aligns with Walmart's sustainability goals, including its aim to cut global operational food loss and waste intensity in half by 2030.

According to Walmart: "By introducing automated item-level identification, Walmart and Avery Dennison transform how fresh food is managed – make operations smarter, faster and more sustainable."

For Avery Dennison, the RFID solution is part of a strategy to increase source-to-store transparency across the food retail industry.

Mike Colarossi, Head of Enterprise Sustainability at Avery Dennison, says: "The UN has identified food waste as a US$1 trillion opportunity. Unlocking that opportunity requires innovation and collaboration across the value chain."

Mike is enthusiastic about how Avery Dennison and Walmart will "take a bite out of the problem".

Understanding RFID technology

Radio Frequency Identification is a way of wirelessly tagging objects via electromagnetic fields to track and store information.

It operates like a barcode, when the RFID tag is triggered by a nearby reader it sends out information through radio waves for the receiver to interpret.

Unlike a barcode, RFID-enabled items do not need to be in the line of sight of a scanner to be read, so RFID tags can be embedded into a product and be scanned as long as it is within range.

RFID technology affects almost everyone's lives. It is used in Oyster cards, chips in passports and for preventing shoplifters. Perhaps most importantly for retailers, it is the key to contactless payments, which have grown worldwide in the past decade.