All Articles About Supply Chain

Blog: Trying to Improve Sustainability Performance in Your Supply Chain? Keep Score.

Andrew Matthews, Associate, Advisory Services

Given the clear business case to rigorously measure supply chain sustainability, how can a company build a scorecard? BSR's Andrew Matthews shares insights and five lessons from Pfizer's experience with supplier scorecards. Read more →

Posted: July 24, 2012 | Topics: Reporting & Communications, Strategy & Integration, Supply Chain

Blog: BSR’s Clean Cargo Makes Ocean Emissions Easy

Jonathan Morris, Associate, Advisory Services

BSR's Clean Cargo Working Group is making it easy for major brands and retailers to calculate their ocean transport environmental footprint. Read an excerpt from a Q&A webinar with Hapag-Lloyd's Erika Sagert and Nike's Dawn Vance held on on July 11. Read more →

Posted: July 17, 2012 | Topics: Climate Change, Supply Chain, Transportation

Report: Value Chain Climate Resilience: A Guide to Managing Climate Impacts in Companies and Communities

As the climate changes, companies must adopt holistic and proactive climate-resilient strategies that take into account the needs of communities, upon which business depends for materials, labor, and more. Read more →

Posted: July 10, 2012 | Topics: Strategy & Integration, Supply Chain | Download (PDF)

BSR Insight Article: Supply Chain Sustainability: Four Lessons From the Past and Four Ideas for the Future

Cody Sisco, Former Manager, Advisory Services

When I first joined BSR less than a decade ago, the companies investing in supply chain sustainability were primarily in the apparel, footwear, and toy sectors. Today, all industries prioritize supply chain sustainability, including the biggest brands in electronics, consumer goods, transportation, and other industries. The number of standards also has multiplied, reflecting a broader set of topics and participants. In the early 2000s, priorities were wages, working hours, and health and safety. Today, issues also include environmental performance and anti-corruption. Product certifications and labels have also exploded. An entire index exists just to catalogue the number of new eco-labels launched every year. But what progress have we made toward improving the lives of workers in supply chains and protecting the ecosystems that support industry and commerce as well as human survival on this planet? Although supply chain sustainability management practices have evolved significantly, we have an opportunity to re-examine traditional approaches and achieve measurable, dramatic improvements. Here, I suggest four lessons we can take from supply chain sustainability efforts to date, and four ideas we can apply to achieve greater impact going forward. Read more →

Posted: July 10, 2012 | Topics: Strategy & Integration, Supply Chain

BSR Insight Article: Going from ‘What’ to ‘How’ in Sustainable Procurement

Celine Suarez, Manager, Advisory Services

Making sense of the increasingly dizzying array of product certifications, labels, data and other sustainability initiatives is a challenge, even for experts. While the best of these efforts provide comprehensive, accurate data on a product's many sustainability attributes, it can be exceptionally difficult to synthesize the data and judge the relative "sustainability" of different products. Procurement professionals face the additional challenge of integrating these criteria into purchasing decisions that must also account for traditional considerations like cost, quality, and delivery. Even initiatives such as the Sustainability Consortium, which takes a comprehensive, science-based approach to conveying the full lifecycle of products' sustainability impacts, will need to be applied to thousands of products that companies purchase before the system can realize its full impact. So how can companies start using the information from the Consortium and other initiatives to evaluate things like light bulbs, bath towels, or milk? How can companies begin to unpack and compare the lifecycle sustainability attributes of the products they procure? If a light bulb is Energy Star certified, is that the best indicator of its overall energy efficiency? If a bath towel was made with certified organic cotton, but that cotton was shipped from Uzbekistan to Saskatchewan, is it considered sustainable? If a gallon of milk is hormone-free but made on a factory farm, is it healthier for humans, or is that benefit outweighed by the fact that it's polluting the soil? A single product might be rated on as many as 20 to 30 sustainability metrics covering issues from natural resource extraction, material inputs, manufacturing, carbon footprint, waste, water use, packaging, and more. BSR's Center for Sustainable Procurement (CSP), an initiative funded by Hilton Worldwide, is examining how procurement professionals can more effectively and efficiently integrate sustainability considerations into their day-to-day purchasing decisions. Read more →

Posted: July 3, 2012 | Topics: Environment, Strategy & Integration, Supply Chain, Sustainable Consumption