How leading companies, NGOs and solution providers are working to address the myriad issues that can arise in any supply chain.
In the lead up to Uzbekistan’s annual cotton fair, a mounting number of international brands and retailers have declared their refusal to source from the country until it ceases the forced labor of children and adults in the cotton fields. Representing an estimated $1.024 trillion USD in revenue, 136 brands and companies have now signed the "Company Pledge Against Forced Child and Adult Labor in Uzbek Cotton," according to the Responsible Sourcing Network.
Fair Trade USA has partnered with nonprofit Kiva to help small-scale coffee farmers access financing, improve crop quality and invest in the future of their families and communities.The partnership resulted from a successful collaboration last year between Fair Trade USA, Kiva and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to pilot Kiva’s first agricultural lending program with a Fair Trade coffee cooperative in Mexico. Kiva says its lenders around the world fully funded nearly all of the loans, which benefited hundreds of small farmers working to prepare their fields for harvest.
Fair trade and organic fashion company INDIGENOUS has launched an Indiegogo campaign to crowdsource funds to increase access to The Fair Trace Tool and fund social impact research with artisans and farmers to bring the story of fair trade and supply chain transparency to the consumer at the point of purchase.
The fashion industry has gone through dramatic changes in the last 20-30 years. Indeed it finds itself in the present at a crossroad: Resource scarcity is triggering shifts in business models and supply chains; waste is the new resource; customers are the sales channel of the future; and legislation is becoming ever more stringent.Yet few businesses venture to think about how their industry may look in five, 15, or 30 years’ time. Radical changes are bound to happen in our world, and its consumer and sourcing markets, over the course of the next few decades, and we will encounter serious challenges of running businesses if we continue as we have in the last few.
Indirect procurement is an area we hope to highlight in this Issue in Focus series on sustainable supply chains. While sourcing raw materials, components and goods-for-resale (GFR) has gotten the lion’s share of sustainable supply chain attention in the corporate world to date, an increasing number of companies are focusing on opportunities to advance their enterprise’s financial, social and environmental sustainability through the purchases they make for their own operations. One driver for this new sustainability focus is the economic aspect of sustainability.
HP recently announced that it has set a goal of driving a 20 percent decrease in its first-tier manufacturing and product transportation-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity by 2020, compared to 2010, a first for the information technology industry.Developed in consultation with the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Climate Savers Program, HP says the GHG emissions-reduction goal will be pursued through a variety of HP-led activities, including:· Business incentives for suppliers to set and achieve tangible GHG emissions-reduction goals.· By 2020, direct prevention of 2 million metric tons of GHG emissions across HP’s multitier supply chain, cumulatively, through specific supplier environmental improvement projects, including:
Italian textile manufacturer Canepa recently announced it has accepted the challenge set by Greenpeace during fashion week last February to create clean and sustainable fashion. The company voluntarily signed up to abide by the guidelines set forth in the Detox Solution Commitment, which aims to abolish the toxic chemicals currently used in the fashion industry by 2020. The challenge has already been accepted by a host of major retail, sportswear and luxury brands — including H&M, Mango, Patagonia and adidas — but this is the first public commitment made by a textile manufacturer.
Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management, has announced that it has teamed with the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) to develop and implement a dynamic web-based solution for the SAC’s sustainability assessment tool, the Higg Index 2.0. Utilizing Schneider Electric’s sustainability and energy management software platform, StruxureWare™ Resource Advisor, the platform will be a groundbreaking tool for the apparel and footwear industries.
In this Issue in Focus, we are examining the latest tools and initiatives in sustainable supply chain management. Here, guest editor Tara Norton offers her perspective on the state and direction of the field.Through this series of articles and insights, we’re inviting companies, leading innovators and thought leaders to share how they’re managing the toughest supply chain challenges and the key trends that are emerging.A few key questions that we’ll be exploring over the coming months include:
In this Issue in Focus, we are examining the latest tools and initiatives in sustainable supply chain management. Here, guest editor Dave Meyer offers his perspective on the state and direction of the field.
Cross-Posted from Collaboration. Mondelez International has announced an agreement with the Indonesian Coffee and Cocoa Research Institute (ICCRI) and suppliers Armajaro and Olam to promote sustainable Indonesian cocoa farming, improve cocoa bean quality and support the development of Indonesian cocoa communities.
Cross-Posted from New Metrics. As the sustainability world places increased focus on supply chain issues, there’s no doubt that any corporation on an authentic CSR journey needs to carefully examine the impacts of its entire supply chain. In fact, according to the United Nations Global Compact’s recently published Global Corporate Sustainability Report, supply chain management is the single greatest barrier to large companies advancing to the next level of sustainability performance.
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. Continuing a positive trend of transparency in the food industry, Starbucks' latest campaign focuses on the quality and sourcing of its coffee beans, as sustainability and health concerns continue to motivate consumers to ask, "Where does this come from?"Launched on Sunday during the Emmys, the new documentary-inspired TV ad shows the heritage of the cafe chain's Arabica coffee beans. "The bean matters, because you cannot roast in quality, you cannot roast in complexity," the voiceover says as black-and-white footage of coffee plantations and the roasting process runs.
Global environmental organisation WWF is urging Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) — the largest paper company in Indonesia and one of the largest in the world — to agree to a list of performance targets in order to improve its current status as one of the world’s most notorious deforesters and back up its commitment to become an environmentally and socially responsible company, the NGO announced today. The performance targets, released by the European and North American Environmental Paper Network today, provide guidance for the assessment of APP’s implementation of its 2020 Sustainability Roadmap and Forest Conservation Policy (FCP).
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. Marks & Spencer (M&S) has signed a one-year deal to work with social enterprise technology provider Good World Solutions to facilitate direct communications with workers in its clothing supply chain via mobile technology.M&S will use Labor Link, technology that returns anonymous, quantitative survey results to M&S direct from supply chain workers. Workers listen to questions on their mobile phones in Hindi, Sinhalese, or another local language, and respond using their touch-tone keypad.
It seems that starting a successful business can happen at any time and to anyone. All it took for Jake Bronstein was a look at where all his underwear was manufactured. Once he realized that 99% of all men’s underwear sold in the U.S. was produced in developing nations, he organized a Kickstarter campaign in April 2012 with a mission to change that, build a better product, and help revive the American cut-and-sew industry (a mission shared by like-minded clothing manufacturers SustainU and Manufacture NY).
Alaska officials last week lobbied Walmart to continue selling the state's wild-caught salmon, as the retail giant considers dropping some 40 of the state’s salmon processors that stopped pursuing the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label.Reuters reports that the issue emerged last year when processors of wild-caught salmon decided to halt use of the internationally accepted blue ecolabel awarded by MSC, claiming it was too expensive and eroded their brand. The processors argued that their own control systems were adequate, and they would consider the Ireland-based Global Trust Certification (GTC) as an alternative.
Suppliers in Indonesia have saved up to 4,715 tons of carbon dioxide since 2011, thanks to an energy efficiency program initiated by Adidas Group and the German Organization for International Cooperation — ‘Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit’ (GIZ).Launched in 2011, “Greening Global Supply Chains — Focus on Energy in Indonesia” aimed to build internal capacities within factories so that they would be able to monitor energy use consistently and analyze the data, propose cost-saving measures and identify and review energy management options and the impact of actions taken.Adidas undertook a road show with GIZ to meet with four clusters of suppliers in Indonesia, and all of the 16 targeted suppliers joined the project.
As part of General Mills’ long-term sustainable sourcing program, the consumer packaged goods (CPG) giant and its Foundation on Thursday announced a four-year joint commitment with supplier partner AgroMantaro to provide $1.1 million to help smallholder artichoke farmers in Peru increase yields and improve profitability.The goals of the new program, which will reach nearly 100 small-scale artichoke farmers in Peru, are to:
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. As companies prepare their first required reports on conflict mineral use to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, key investors and human rights groups have released a paper that sets expectations for the contents of the inaugural reports required by Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.