Supply Chain
How leading companies, NGOs and solution providers are working to address the myriad issues that can arise in any supply chain.
Walmart’s Project Gigaton: How to Get Started on Your Own Sustainability Journey
Recently, Walmart announced a bold initiative to cut a gigaton (aka 1 billion tons) of emissions from its supply chain. Achieving this moonshot will require many companies to act — and given the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the timing couldn’t be better. I’m often asked, “Why did Walmart do this?” My 25 years of working with companies tells me the answer is obvious: Because it’s good for business!
New CDP Data Reveals US Suppliers Represent One-Third Global Carbon-Reduction Opportunities
Back in January, CDP released its annual Global Supply Chain Report 2017, highlighting the work of businesses around the world in helping reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In 2016 alone, the world’s largest purchasing organizations used their buying clout to drive down emissions by 434 million tons of CO2 — more than France’s total GHG emissions in 2014.
New MSC Report Spotlights Certification's Role in Delivering the SDGs
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) has released a new report highlighting the positive impact certification can have in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The MSC Global Impacts Report 2017 details more than a thousand examples of positive change being made by certified fisheries to safeguard fish stocks and marine habitats.
Sainsbury’s Ruffles Certifiers' Feathers with Launch of In-House ‘Fairly Traded’ Label
British supermarket group Sainsbury’s has launched its own in-house sustainability standard, provoking backlash from The Fairtrade Foundation and Fairtrade producers alike.
L'Oréal, McDonald's Commit to Nix Deforestation from Commodity Supply Chains
Forests play a critical role in mitigating global climate change and deforestation is responsible for 10-15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, as well as habitat loss and social conflict. With the development of the Paris Agreement on climate change and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the protection of forests has become a top priority for policymakers, investors and consumers.
What about the ‘S’ in ESG? New Guidelines for Evaluating Companies’ Social Performance
When it comes down to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, more and more investors are looking at how companies perform on human rights. Guarding long-term investments against a potential fallout from social grievances has become part of their fiduciary duty.
Canopy, Rainforest Alliance Launch First-Ever Audit for Rayon-Viscose Supply Chain
Cotton is often king in discussions surrounding the creation of a more sustainable apparel industry, yet over 120 million trees are felled every year — 30 percent of which originate from ancient and endangered forests — to produce textiles such as viscose and rayon.
Q&A: Tim Greiner on the Key Players in the Sustainable Agriculture Revolution
By 2050, our global population will grow by more than 2 billion, which will require 70 percent more food. In addition to rising demand, companies are facing increasing scrutiny on the environmental impacts across their value chains. While improvements in processing and packaging are helping brands progress on sustainability, interventions at farm level are essential for driving real change. We recently spoke with Pure Strategies’ Co-Founder and Managing Director, Tim Greiner, to learn more about how brands and farmers both are working together to usher the industry towards a more sustainable future.
Wrangler Launches Soil Health Pilot Program to Bolster Sustainable Cotton Supply
The fashion and textile industry is in the midst of a paradigm shift with key industry stakeholders working to drive sustainable cotton towards the mainstream.
Groundbreaking Digital Platform Helps Businesses Identify Climate Risks Across the Value Chain
A new digital transparency tool is making it easier than ever for businesses to pinpoint climate change risks along their supply chains. Launched by data specialists Everycs, the open-source data platform Makersite is the first of its kind and allows users to map carbon footprints and assess environmental impacts at different stages of the value chain.
Coalition Calls on Fashion Industry to Adopt Transparency Pledge
Human Rights Watch is calling on the fashion industry to adopt and carry out the Apparel and Footwear Supply Chain Transparency Pledge. The organization contacted 72 apparel companies, asking them to publish information identifying the factories that produce their goods, addressing a key obstacle to rooting out abusive labor practices across the industry and helping to prevent disasters such as the Rana Plaza collapse.
Fashion Transparency Index Reveals Even Top Brands Lagging in Supply Chain Transparency
Four years after the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in which 1,134 people were killed, Fashion Revolution has released its 2017 Fashion Transparency Index, which ranks 100 of the biggest fashion companies on their social and environmental policies, practices and impacts.
Starbucks Helps Safeguard the Future of Coffee with Pledge to Replant 1B Coffee Trees
Building on its commitment to provide support to coffee growers around the world, Starbucks Coffee Company has announced that it will deliver 100 million healthy coffee trees to farmers who need them by 2025.
Walmart Launches Sustainability Platform to Reduce 1GT CO2 Emissions Across Value Chain
Walmart is the first retailer to adopt a science-based target emissions-reduction plan, in which it aims to reduce its absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 18 percent by 2025, as well as reducing CO2e emissions from upstream and downstream Scope 3 sources by one billion tons (a gigton) between 2015 and 2030.
Call to Action: What Will It Really Take to Build Ethical Tech Supply Chains?
High-profile incidents, such as the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh in 2013 and the exposé of slavery and human trafficking in the Thai seafood and electronics industries in 2014 have rightly drawn the world’s attention to global supply chains. As shameful as these incidents are, they are not anomalies. Many unethical, unsafe and unsustainable practices persist, under the radar, three or four layers down the supply chain.
Hershey Traces It Back with New SourceMap Transparency Tool
As consumers increasingly demand to know more about their food, transparency is becoming a top priority for brands. Providing information not only about ingredients, but where and how ingredients are produced is becoming common practice — and those who abstain from such actions are at risk of falling behind.
Target Puts Responsible Sourcing Aspirations Into Action with New Forest Products Policy
Putting its responsible sourcing aspirations into action, Target has developed a new forest products policy. The policy will see the retailer source all of the wood, paper, paper-based packaging and wood-based fiber used in its brand-owned products from well managed, credibly certified forests and post-consumer recycled materials.
New SALSA Platform to Promote Sustainability in Agri-Business Across SE Asia
In a bid to boost sustainability in Indonesia’s agri-business sector, PT SMART Tbk (PT SMART) — a subsidiary of Golden Agri-Resources (GAR) — and the French Agricultural Research Center for International Development (CIRAD) have launched a new regional platform that will deliver research-based training and enhance sustainability standards in major commodity chains, including palm oil.
Sex and Labor Trafficking in the U.S. Redefined, Classified in 'Typology of Modern Slavery'
Polaris, a leader in the global fight to eradicate modern slavery and help survivors restore their freedom, has released a new report, The Typology of Modern Slavery, that breaks down instances of sex and labor trafficking into 25 distinct categories, detailing the unique trafficker profile, recruitment tactics, victim profile, and method of control for each different subset of modern slavery.
Applied DNA Launches CertainT Platform to Improve Traceability, Boost Consumer Confidence
Applied DNA Sciences, a provider of DNA-based supply chain, anti-counterfeiting and anti-theft technology, has introduced a new supply chain platform known as CertainT that certifies authenticity and origin of products and brands.