…these kinds of reports help supply chain and operations professionals understand what may be required of them in the not so distant future. So for example, a vice president of procurement can look at this chart and realize that while their company is only screening business partners on ethics and sustainability issues to a very limited extent, there is a good chance that in a few years his company will require his department to do so much more extensively because this is where this industry is headed.
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Archive for Sustainability – Page 2
Last year, Ben & Jerry’s celebrated a milestone: all the plant-based ingredients in their ice cream, yogurt, and sorbet products transitioned to non-genetically modified (non-GMO) sources. Now, they’re working with dozens of other food companies to build up non-GMO commodity supply chains across the country to support this growing sector of the food industry. According to Andy Barker, the social mission strategy and policy manager for Ben & Jerry’s, getting to a non-GMO supply chain […]
Read More →Sustainable logistics is like a tsunami that is building far out at sea. Right now, the impact of sustainability on the lives of most logisticians is nonexistent. But eventually that tidal wave reaches the coast and things are never the same. In an analysis completed last June by the Governance & Accountability Institute, seventy two percent (72%) of the companies included in The S&P 500 Index were found to have published a sustainability or corporate […]
Read More →I had a conversation on sustainable product development with Eric Leafquist, a product manager at Dassault-Systemes-SolidWorks. SolidWorks is a leading supplier of 3D design software tools that let you create, simulate, publish, and manage your data. Driven partly by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the leading reporting format used in sustainability reporting, companies are beginning a journey to take an end to end view of sustainability surrounding the products they produce. GRI’s latest guidelines ask […]
Read More →Corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports reflect the philosophy that corporations have a variety of stakeholders – investors, employees, suppliers, customers, and the broader society – and that to attempt to meet the needs of some stakeholders at the expense of others can be both irresponsible and financially short sighted. I’ve been reading the sustainability reports of the world’s largest companies. I’ve formed opinions on what characterizes a good report, how you can look at these […]
Read More →Sourcing to low cost destinations is not a new development and Bangladesh has been a favored destination of apparel brands and retailers. But incidents like Rana Plaza disaster (an eight-story factory collapsed, killing over 1,000 workers) brought to light non-existent safety measures. This incident, and three others during 2013-14, challenged the sourcing strategies of large apparel brand retailers and compelled them to embrace socially responsible procurement processes. Almost all brands that source from Bangladesh belatedly […]
Read More →There are various lists that include the world’s most sustainable companies: Corporate Knights, the Climate Performance Leadership Index, and others. Walmart does not make those lists. None of them. Walmart is doing more in sustainability, particularly in the supply chain area, than they are given credit for. In contrast, there seems to be some sort of halo effect surrounding one of Walmart’s biggest competitors, Amazon. Amazon is not known for treating their warehouse workers kindly, […]
Read More →There’s been a common thread in my conversations with shippers over the past few years: their desire to take freight off the truckload grid — i.e., minimize the number of one-way truck shipments they make. This desire is driven by a number of factors, including: Capacity concerns: A lot of capacity has left the market since 2008, with many carriers going bankrupt when the recession hit and others downsizing their fleets. This hasn’t been a […]
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