Meijer invites environmentally focused suppliers to Sustainability Summit

Meijer is hosting a Sustainability Summit this fall, expanding upon last year's inaugural event to give even more vendors nationwide the opportunity to showcase their environmentally-focused products for Meijer merchants to consider offering on shelves.

This virtual event will be held Oct. 11-13 and seeks to engage suppliers with sustainable products in the food, health and beauty, everyday essentials, pets, apparel and general merchandise categories.

"At Meijer, we understand that to be a good company, we must be a good neighbor, which is why we're interested in meeting new vendors to further integrate sustainability attributes into our product offerings and daily operations," said Don Sanderson, chief merchandising and marketing officer at Meijer. "We want to provide our customers with the great products they're looking for while also being mindful of the impact those products make within our communities and the world around us."

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The Meijer Sustainability Summit aims to build relationships with environmentally conscious suppliers to expand its sustainable product offerings in categories storewide. In order to meet its sustainability standards, Meijer merchants are targeting 38 different certifications on vendor products, or their manufacturing and procurement processes.

For example, seafood merchants are looking at vendors following the Best Aquaculture Practices, and toy merchants are interested in vendors that have Ecologo certifications to ensure products are made without harmful chemicals. Meanwhile, the retailer's grocery and consumable merchants are looking for vendors who participate in the Rainforest Alliance Certification Program that validates standards on forests, climate, human rights and livelihoods. Meijer is also seeking products across all categories with sustainable packaging attributes.

Certified vendors with retail-ready products can apply by Aug. 25 for consideration here.

Meijer is partnering with Efficient Collaborative Retail Marketing and its subsidiary product discovery tool, RangeMe, to host this event through the company's ECRM Connect virtual platform.

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Once applications for the event are submitted, Meijer teams will review and select the vendors they would like to meet at the summit. Suppliers not chosen for the summit will still be accessible through the RangeMe registration tool and may be reviewed by Meijer merchants again in the future as business needs change.