Last month I told you about efforts in the U.K. to measure the size of manufacturers' “carbon footprint,” or the amount of greenhouse gases emitted during manufacturing and distribution. I suggested you start calculating the size of your carbon footprint so you have a ready answer when someone inside or outside your company asks for it.

For some of you that day of reckoning may come sooner than expected. Wal-Mart just announced a partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project to measure the energy used to create products throughout its supply chain, including the procurement, manufacturing and distribution processes. Using this measurement tool, Wal-Mart is initiating a pilot with a group of suppliers to look for ways to be more energy efficient.

The pilot will focus on seven product categories to determine their overall environmental impact. Wal-Mart is encouraging suppliers to measure and manage their greenhouse gas emissions, and ultimately help Wal-Mart reduce its carbon footprint.

Will such analysis get so granular that materials handling will be among the line items looked at? John Nofsinger, CEO of the Material Handling Industry of America told me he wouldn't be surprised, but that industry associations like his will play an important role in keeping this trend from becoming the next Y2K bandwagon.

“Once the content analysts go to work there will be a lot of flim flam from people claiming to know all the answers on how to become a favorite Wal-Mart supplier,” he said. “We'd like to be a sounding board and filter of these things so we can offer the real skinny as far as we can determine it.”

Then I asked Jim Stanway, senior director of global energy services for Wal-Mart, about the danger that some “entrepreneurs” might start using the initiative to sell the secret formula to becoming a “preferred partner” to Wal-Mart. He seemed to take umbrage at my question.

“We have not said that this process will be used for supplier preference because the process itself is still being defined,” he said. “We simply hope that our suppliers will report their energy footprints and strategies for addressing sustainability. Our suppliers will be responsible for the accuracy of the information provided.”

As you'll see in Corinne Kator's article on the retail industry this sector is still struggling to answer many tough questions, including those dealing with the value of technologies such as RFID and how far back into a product's supply chain retailer “partnership” extends. Even Wal-Mart is still struggling with those. As Stanway told me, “We believe it is important to understand the lifecycle of a product, but we also recognize the limitations in doing so.”

Materials handlers in all industries are getting better and better at measuring their own inputs and outputs. The next challenge will be finding out how and when to share them – and with whom.