WRI Steps Up Efforts to Help Companies Green Their Supply Chains
The World Resources Institute (WRI) is beefing up its efforts to help companies green their supply chains, thanks to a $420,000 grant from Walmart.
WRI’s Green Supply Chain Initiative will develop and deploy a new set of accounting tools to measure the greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts of a company’s supply chain and the products that are sold to customers. These tools will be based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard, which is an international accounting standard used by businesses to identify, calculate and report their own emissions. It was developed by the WRI and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in 1998.
“Sustainability is becoming a driver of business strategy for smart companies. Sustainability trends affect competitiveness, costs, regulatory risk, and market position,” says WRI president Jonathan Lash. “The companies that reduce emissions along their supply chains will capture new markets with their green offerings while preserving the environment and improving worker health and safety.”
In addition, the grant will help WRI create a web tool that will help clarify the various environmental certifications given to products. This “Green Standard Guide” will help companies navigate through the often ambiguous green claims of today’s environmental certifications or labels.
Considering the current inconsistency of eco-label standards –and the prevalence of greenwashing –a guide like this is sure to serve as a valuable resource for supply chain managers looking to avoid environmental risk.
Of course, it is lovely to know how much greenhouse gases are being produced for which element of a production system. However, initiatives like have the tendency to bring about other trade offs. I’m not sure on which data initiative base their believe that greenhouse gases are by very far the largest problem of sustainability, even so as to use the words “sustainability” and “reduction of GHG emissions” in an almost equivalent manner.
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