How do you explain to your CEO why your company’s ignoring the green product market when most Fortune 500 companies are ready to review all things sustainable?

And, just for good measure, try explaining why it’s OK to be blacklisted from Wal-Mart’s shelves because your products aren’t green enough to keep up with the competition’s eco-enhanced products.

Reason to take this seriously: Wal-Mart is already working on a sustainability index that will rate the greeniness of all products it sells.

Now Wal-Mart Canada’s taking things to the next step. It’s pushing all of its corporate retail competitors and product suppliers to get on the sustainability bandwagon.

That’s the point of the Green Business Summit Wal-Mart hosts Feb. 10 in Vancouver, Canada. The company openly says the point of the conference is to “accelerate change towards sustainability,” which means everything Wal-Mart touches will have to have some eco-improvements.

Attendees include American and Canadian retailers and product suppliers.

Wal-Mart hasn’t gone soft, but the company smells change in consumer buying habits. It wants to be ready to offer green products or at least offer shoppers a way to pick which product is greener than the next.

The company’s also very much into activities its supply chain companies can do to reduce their environmental footprints. The conference will feature some initial case studies of how going green makes business sense. For example, it will detail how:

• Wal-Mart Canada saved $8 million a year by adopting energy-reduction programs
• Maple Leaf Foods converts food wastes into sales of bio-diesel fuels, and
• Coca-Cola reduces waste generation with its new PlantBottle that is 100% recyclable.

The conference will also feature sessions on energy efficiency, waste reduction, green products and employee green-engagement.

The complete list of suppliers is listed on Wal-Mart’s Green Business Summit Web site and there’s a video about the summit featuring TV personality David Suzuki and Wal-Mart Canada CEO David Cheesewright.

Wal-Mart will also work with the Carbon Disclosure Project to verify greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction claims made by its 100,000 suppliers.

Tags: Green Business Summit, Wal-Mart