Blog

Why Sustainable Supply Chains Matter

This article was recently published on Environmental Leader. 

Environmental managers and chief sustainability officers are increasingly looking to their supply chains to conserve natural resources and reduce carbon emissions.

Considering supply chains are responsible for up to four times the greenhouse gas emissions of a company’s direct operations and many suppliers operate in water-stressed areas of the globe, this makes sense from an environmental savings standpoint.

To this end, we’ve seen major corporations like Apple push for more rigorous environmental standards and renewable energy use across its supply chain — and publish regular supply chain audit reports detailing suppliers’ progress — and Nike creating an entirely new apparel supply chain company that will “embed sustainability and transparency into the business.”

State of Supplier Management 2016

In the current non-financial reporting landscape there is a heightened focus on understanding your supply chain. As a result, organisations are increasingly evaluating the performance of their suppliers against a wide spectrum of non-financial criteria and monitoring the associated risks.

In order to better understand what is driving this behaviour and how companies are identifying and mitigating supply chain risk, Greenstone conducted the State of Supplier Management 2016 survey.

State of supplier management survey

Greenstone has been providing non-financial reporting software and services to organisations for over 8 years, and through our clients we have witnessed the ever changing reporting landscape first hand.

The most active trend recently has been an increased focus on suppliers and supply chain risk. The key drivers for this have been increased direct legislation, evolving reporting frameworks and heightened sensitivity to third party risk from clients, investors and other stakeholders.

Supply chain - the next step in Eurostar's non-financial reporting journey

An interview with Eurostar’s Luke Ervine, Head of Environment & Energy

What has Eurostar’s sustainability journey looked like to date?

Our journey started in 2006 when we commissioned independent research into the carbon footprint of our passenger journeys. This study revealed that traveling to our core destinations using high speed rail is more carbon efficient than travelling by air.

However, for Eurostar, being more carbon efficient than our competitors wasn’t enough. So in April 2007 we launched our Tread Lightly Sustainability programme to reduce our impact on the environment and improve our environmental and energy performance.

Greenstone at the 10th Annual Sustainable Supply Chain Summit Europe

We are pleased to announce that our CEO, Matthew de Villiers, will be speaking at the Ethical Corporation’s Sustainable Supply Chain Summit on 10^th and 11^th November in London.

This year’s Summit will show how companies deliver a resilient value chain through industry collaboration and business innovation, focusing on; responsible sourcing, impact measurement, scaling up and supplier engagement. 

Case Study: Improve Supplier Compliance and Reduce Risk in Your Supply Chain

Greenstone SupplierPortal is a flexible, scalable, easy to use tool that enables the efficient collection of Supplier data and provides a suite of Buyer analytics to monitor compliance, performance and minimise risk.  It enables suppliers and buyers to share data through a secure online solution, enabling buyers to focus on monitoring and identifying potential areas of risk and undertaking in-depth supplier analysis, rather than simple data gathering. The Portal includes customisable Buyer features, for example: questionnaires, scorecards, flags, group comparisons and benchmarks.