With a grant to the Institute of Sustainable Communities, Walmart is helping to establish an Environment, Health and Safety Academy to improve fire safety in factories like this one in Bangladesh.
Providing the best quality products for our customers is a priority for Walmart. But we want to make sure those products are also manufactured in an ethical and safe way. That’s why Walmart is donating $1.6 million to the Institute of Sustainable Communities (ISC), a U.S.-based nonprofit, to establish the Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) Academy in Bangladesh.
The EHS Academy will give apparel manufacturers in Bangladesh access to high quality, affordable, and comprehensive training on fire, environmental, health and workplace safety. In addition to funding, Walmart is also providing technical support and guidance to ISC. We see this as a partnership that will allow us to use technical training and engagement to address challenges in the supply chain related to fire safety and other hazards. It also builds on the work that we’re already doing in Bangladesh, including training women factory workers so that their work environment is a safe one. And we have partnered with the Bangladeshi Buyers Forum to provide fire safety training to more than 3,000 factories in Bangladesh.
Walmart’s partnership with ISC will be similar to the program already in place in China. Here, Chinese workers who have already undergone training work on an assembly line.
ISC has already opened similar academies in other countries, including China, India, Poland, and the U.S. and this will be their second effort with Walmart. In 2009, we supported a new EHS Academy in China, providing financial resources, technical expertise and advice that helped support two EHS Academies with high-impact training courses and trainers and a growing pool of peer-networked trainees in China.
Fire safety is something we take very seriously. This past January, we instituted a zero tolerance policy for unauthorized subcontracting and strengthened fire safety standards in Bangladesh. We are also partnering with Bureau Veritas and will fund electrical, building, and fire safety assessments of factories in Bangladesh to help prevent fires.
Walmart is especially committed to raising awareness of fire safety and establishing best practices for fire prevention in Bangladesh to improve the industry as a whole. For example, we are currently working with the Bangladesh Manufacturers and Exporters Association and the government of Bangladesh to reinforce the need for improved fire safety in Bangladesh, as well as highlight effective steps necessary to meet current fire safety challenges.
These are just some of the ways we are dedicated to ethical and safe manufacturing as we work to improve safety conditions in factories around the world.
