2Sustain

On Monday, Marks & Spencer (M&S), one of Britain’s largest retailers, announced a program to expand the green initiatives it launched in 2007 in hopes of becoming the world’s most sustainable retailer by 2015.

M&S first launched its ethical and eco plan, called Plan A, in January 2007. Its overall goals included making M&S carbon neutral, sending no waste from its operations to landfill, extending sustainable sourcing, setting new standards in ethical trading and helping customers and employees live a healthier lifestyle.

With this week’s announcement, the company has made a commitment to 80 ambitious new initiatives, many of which are going to major impacts on the M&S supplier network. For example, M&S is planning to: (more…)

Safeway Inc. is now the first U.S.-based retail grocery chain and manufacturer of private label merchandise to join The Sustainability Consortium, an independent organization of diverse global participants that work collaboratively to build a scientific foundation that drives innovation aimed at improving consumer product sustainability.

Specifically, Safeway is drawn to the Consortium’s product life cycle assessment (LCA) mission.  The company wants to aggregate data from throughout its supply chain –from primary sectors such as agriculture, dairy, packaging and fishery through industrial food processing to retail delivery –and then use this data to create a corporate-wide supply chain policy that encourages sustainable purchasing and manufacturing practices for the organization’s direct and indirect buying. (more…)

Yesterday, Walmart announced a goal to eliminate 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its global supply chain by the end of 2015.

The footprint of Walmart’s global supply chain is many times larger than its operational footprint, and so it represents a much more significant opportunity to reduce emissions. In fact, the ambitious goal announced yesterday represents one and a half times the company’s estimated global carbon footprint growth over the next five years and is the equivalent of taking more than 3.8 million cars off the road for a year.

Walmart collaborated with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to develop this innovative approach which looks at the supply chain on a global scale. After all, as the EDF website says:

Walmart’s supply chain is where the action is. It’s the biggest possible lever that Walmart could bring to the table. Walmart will work with suppliers to reduce their emissions – which they otherwise might not do – resulting in positive ripple effects around the globe.

This new program to reduce GHGs has three main components: (more…)

Back in August, in my post “Do You Know Your Forest Footprint?,” I mentioned that the Forest Footprint Disclosure (FFD) Project planned to release an annual report of “best-in-class” corporations in early 2010.

Well, those results are in, and they show –for the first time ever –how 35 different companies are tackling the issue of sustainable sourcing of Forest Risk Commodities (FRCs), such as palm oil, soy, timber, beef, leather and biofuels. (Read the full 64-page report here.)

The FFD Project sent its disclosure request was sent to 217 high profile international companies, selected by Fortune 500 status and exposure to FRCs. The questionnaire asked for information in 11 key sections, including Risk Assessment, Sustainable Supply Chain Development and Support and Governance Process. All told, 35 companies –including global leaders such as British Airways, BMW, Travis Perkins, L’Oréal, Weyerhaeuser, Kingfisher, Adidas, Nike, Mondi and Unilever –disclosed in response to this first approach. (more…)

More than half of Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) supply chain members expect to deselect suppliers in the future for failing to meet carbon management criteria, according to a new CDP report.

The second annual CDP Supply Chain Report, produced by A.T. Kearney, summarizes climate change information from 710 suppliers, and it shows that carbon management is becoming an increasingly fundamental component of supply chain strategy for the 44 CDP supply chain member companies –including global corporations such as Dell, Juniper Networks, National Grid, PepsiCo and Reckitt Benckiser.

Specifically, the report found that: (more…)