No doubt, a driving force behind a greener Wal-Mart--especially with the thousands of Chinese suppliers it works with--is to improve Wal-Mart's battered corporate image in the United States and abroad by holding suppliers to stricter manufacturing, product safety and environmental requirements. CEO Scott receives much of the credit for taking this critical first step, says Tohamy. "All along, Lee Scott has been pretty committed to this goal," she adds.

In past speeches, Tohamy notes, Scott and other Wal-Mart execs have noted that sustainability and environmentally friendly business practices not only align well with what customers want from retailers, but they "can align well with profitability and good business sense," she says.

Wal-Mart's new standards can also be classified as risk management. China, as a nation of consumer-product good (CPG) manufacturers, has become a supplier to the world. And : 70 percent of commodities sold at Wal-Mart are made in China. Furthermore, if Wal-Mart was its own economy, it alone would rank as China's eighth-biggest trading partner, ahead of Russia and Canada, according to China Business Weekly.

But Chinese suppliers' reputation for manufacturing operations is anything but green and product safety has been a serious issue, especially for the past couple of years.

"In our research," Tohamy says, "China has been damned up and down as the main source of risk when it comes to product quality, to IP infringement, to supplier failure when it comes to product defects." (To read about 's and Nintendo's recent supply chain mistakes, see "" and "")