Sustainability

The challenge for sustainable business is to identify growth models that result in reduced environmental impact.

Apple’s Suppliers Responsibility Report, released last week, is another big step away from its previous secrecy regarding its environmental performance, and another sign that Apple recognises that its tremendous profits are directly tied to protecting human rights and a healthy planet.

In this Report, we showcase our achievements and challenges and provide detailed data and context about our actions. We also share information about how we work with others to address sustainability issues around the world.

The trend of developing green supply and demand chains is now gaining wide popularity. However, most companies are still figuring out as to how they can achieve this and where do they start.

I’ve thought long and hard about what to say this year because of all the media buzz around shale oil and natural gas fracking as energy saviors, maybe bringing back cheap energy and rendering the big user oil countries less dependent on oil, and less dependent on OPEC and other oil producing countries. My view has not been altered by the recent news around fracking.

If recent news provides any indication, reports of clean tech’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. In case you missed it, 60 Minutes recently aired a provocative story on “the cleantech crash." While it sparked a lot of negative reactions from those in the clean energy and sustainability world, it also seemed to light a fuse.

The opportunity for sustainability has the potential to be great. But Rana Plaza-type disasters won’t be avoided, and the impact of progress will increasingly worsen unless we attempt a bolder strategy. To achieve industry transformation, we need to step up the game. It is now time to decide on the way forward.

How do we address the ever-growing concerns with minimizing negative human rights and conflict impacts of supply chains with the push to incentivize responsible sourcing from the areas experiencing the most devastating impacts? And do we know what responsible sourcing means in all situations?

The case for responsible business practices is strengthening, with a growing number of companies taking action. This report synthesizes survey feedback from nearly 2,000 Global Compact companies and assesses the state of corporate sustainability today.

Since 2007, the survey has helped the Global Compact understand and benchmark how corporate participants are advancing their commitment to the Global Compact and implementing the Ten Principles. The Global Corporate Sustainability Report 2013 is based on findings from the Global Compact Annual Implementation Survey including 1,712 respondents from 112 countries.

Our warehouse/DC engineer examines how you can transform your traditional warehouse environment and implement sustainable strategies that benefit your business, your customers, and your planet.

More companies are adopting sustainability initiatives to help identify areas in their organization where they can reap savings that also help improve the environment. This is because sustainability has become a way for companies to understand the business practices that reduce waste, which impacts the bottom line and their environmental footprint.

Supply professionals are in a unique, critical position to impact the global supply chain and therefore should supplement their organization's work in sustainability and social responsibility by promoting sustainability and social responsibility through leadership and participation on appropriate committees, boards and panels of governmental and nongovernmental organizations.

Conservation International (CI) collaborated with our longtime partner, Starbucks Coffee Company, to begin answering these questions for its home-grown supply chain program, Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices, and we have a few takeaways to share on the value of these assessments as well as how to build ongoing results assessment into your own program.

With responsibilities that include more than 70,000 outbound deliveries a week to Starbucks retail stores, distribution channels and outlets worldwide, keeping Starbucks products flowing from suppliers to customers is, needless to say, a complex exercise.

Results from the Deloitte Consulting, the Corporate Responsibility Officer Association (CROA), the Institute for Supply Management™ (ISM), and the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Sustainable Value Chain Survey.

Sustainability initiatives with suppliers and service providers in areas like energy emissions and carbon management can have mixed effects on supply chain performance. But they do have one overarching benefit: the potential to create closer relationships with these key partners

Over the past century, UPS has become one of the world’s premier logistics companies. Among its notable strides are its “direct-to-store” delivery model, its forward-thinking embrace of the “cloud” as a new platform for international shipments and its dedication to ensuring that Brown also means green.

This paper aims to analyze the factors influencing the adoption of green practices in Chinese logistics industry. The determinant factors are composed of technological, organizational, and environmental dimensions. Environmental uncertainty and green practice’s complexity have significantly negative influences on green practice adoption.

Using regression analysis and a survey of 322 logistics firms in China's Shanghai and Shenzhen areas, Chieh-Yu Lin and Yi-Hui Ho (both of Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan), analysed the factors that influence the adoption of green practices within the logistics industry. Green practices investigated include the adoption of fuel efficient vehicles, electricity management systems and solar energy systems.