Who’s really driving the green movement for businesses? It’s not environmental groups or government agencies.

It’s Wal-Mart.

The huge retailer plans to tag every product it sells with a label that tells buyers how green the item really is.

And Wal-Mart plans to pass along the cost to its 100,000 suppliers.

Wal-Mart’s Green Business Summit, Feb. 10 in Vancouver, British Columbia, aims to “accelerate change towards sustainability.”

Wal-Mart is reacting to its customers who want various green information about the products they buy, such as:

• packaging materials
• energy used in production
• transportation emissions and fuel usage, and
• raw materials.

Just how much green information can you fit on a small consumer item? Soon, all buyers will need is a bar code and a smart phone.

The technology already exists to develop a smart phone app that will allow consumers to use a package’s bar code to access green information.

How do companies prepare? With demands like those coming from Wal-Mart, companies will have to track their environmental footprints and then tout any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions or energy usage and explain how that makes the company greener.