How leading companies, NGOs and solution providers are working to address the myriad issues that can arise in any supply chain.
According to the USDA, consumer demand for organic foods has grown by double-digits every year since the 1990s — but organic acreage has not kept up. Today, only about one percent of US farmland is organic and farmers looking to transition to organic face real barriers, including shouldering financial uncertainty during the three year transition period required to be eligible for USDA Organic certification.
Businesses face myriad ongoing challenges: Apart from the day-to-day fluctuations in market dynamics, entrepreneurs must deal with economies of scale, inter- and intra-market competition and regulatory compliance. Yet some voluntary compliance can unleash a competitive advantage expedites addressing the other challenges. Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification is precisely one such step: Especially in a time when consumer interest in sustainable materials continues to grow, FSC-certified wood and paper make sense economically, socially and environmentally.
A product will go through multiple points of contact in its lifecycle. From the designer to the manufacturer to transport to the consumer and end of life, each component has an impact. Environmentally and socially responsible supply chain management is key to addressing the often disproportionate impacts of manufacturing processes, and balancing ecology with economy in the supply chain process.
Do Europeans have unreasonable expectations for the agriculture industry? New poll results suggest that 91 percent of consumers think food should remain affordable, but just 54 percent think that farmers should be able to use pesticides to keep prices down.
One of the world’s largest palm oil companies, Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), has published a 4-year plan to trace its entire supply to the growers’ plantations. Earlier this year, GAR mapped its entire supply chain to 489 individual mills, and plans to build on that progress by achieving 100 percent traceability to plantation for all of the palm oil purchased and processed by the company by 2020.
This Sunday, April 24th, will mark the third anniversary of the tragic Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, when workplace health and safety failures cost 1,134 people their lives and injured many others.
This year, Fashion Revolution’s annual campaign has expanded into a week-long series of events featuring hundreds of activities, stunts and social experiments across 84 countries worldwide. Throughout Fashion Revolution Week, April 18th to 24th, consumers will demand transparency and raise awareness of exploitation in the fashion supply chain by posting on social media using the hashtag #WhoMadeMyClothes.
Six years after NGOs released a scathing report on Malaysian palm oil producer IOI Group, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) decided to suspend IOI last Monday.
I was fortunate enough to visit Manila in the Philippines recently for an interesting summit that was held by the Asian Development Bank and supported by CSR Asia. The event brought together a diverse group of participants from government, investment organizations, and people who work on the ground helping facilitate Inclusive Business (IB). IB can be seen as a variant of social entrepreneurship where large firms work to reduce the risk around partnerships with bottom of the pyramid entrepreneurs by treating them as part of the company that they serve.
Consumers these days want to know that when a business says that it is producing something ethically and sustainably, that it can back up such claims throughout its entire supply chain. After all, a business’s claims to operating sustainably are only partly fulfilled when it can’t confirm the sustainability of its raw materials or other products involved in production. So customers increasingly expect businesses to make sure their supply chain is as committed as they are to principled behaviour.
Modern slavery has been a popular topic in corporate responsibility lately, and with good reason: Forced labor affects roughly 21 million people around the globe, and 71 percent of companies believe there is a likelihood of modern slavery occurring at some point within their supply chains.
71 percent of companies believe there is a likelihood of modern slavery occurring at some point within their supply chains, according to research conducted by the Ashridge Centre for Business and Sustainability at Hult International Business School and the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI).
A non-animal, non-vegetable feed for fish farms could help reduce the negative impacts of our fish consumption. Fish is likely an inevitable part of how the world will meet the protein demands of over 9 billion people by 2050, and the World Bank predicts that fish farms will produce nearly two thirds of global supply by 2030.
Mislabeled seafood products have become a widespread problem: A recent study found that across 4,500 global samples, 30 percent of seafood products are mislabeled. The issue threatens reputable and sustainable fisheries and seafood traders, and can allow illegal and unregulated fishing practices to go undetected. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing has been estimated at 11-26 million tonnes of landed fish each year, representing losses of $10-23.5 billion to the fishing industry.
Water quality is an urgent national concern in the UK, where only 17 percent of water bodies currently meet ‘good’ standards. Several businesses are already working with farmers and others in their supply chains to improve the situation, but UK charity Business in the Community (BITC) is calling for more to be done.
‘Social Impact and profitability are two sides of the same coin’ was one of the core takeaways from the Sedex Supply Chain Sustainability Conference, which took place last week at the iconic Barbican Conference Centre in London. The theme of this year’s conference was ‘simplification’: acknowledging the complexity of progressing environmental and social sustainability in a field that is becoming increasingly multi-faceted and prone to duplication.
Today, outdoor apparel company The North Face launches the second installment of its locally and domestically produced clothing line, The Backyard Project. For this new line, The North Face challenged itself to find ways to expand and scale its pilot project with a goal of increasing both domestic production and impact. The Backyard Project again brought together a collective of farmers, artisans and small businesses to achieve increased production, new styles and colors and a lower price point for consumers.
Two powerful palm oil companies are fulfilling promises related to accountability in their supply chains and bolstering their sustainability.
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has released new voluntary criteria that expand on its existing Principles & Criteria (P&C) for sustainable palm oil production.
Policymakers can learn about how the transformation of agricultural markets is likely to affect the poor in the developing world by studying Walmart, says a new report from the Global Food and Agriculture Program at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.Small Farmers, Big Retailers: Are New Sourcing Strategies a Path to Inclusion? examines Walmart’s food sourcing strategies in two markets — China and Nicaragua — to draw lessons for governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and companies trying to meet the growing demand for food from rapidly growing urban populations.