Sedex teams up with World Bank to launch supply chain monitoring platform
Sedex Global and the World Bank Institute have joined forces to launch a new, free-to-use platform that will enable companies and investors to monitor the responsibility and sustainability of supply chains. The user-managed Open Supply Chain Platform will allow businesses – and their stakeholders – to investigate the credentials of their suppliers and consumers against governance and sustainability indicators. These indicators will include areas such as business ethics, labour standards and environmental footprints. Its designers hope that the project will fill vital gaps in the availability and visibility of supply chain data, helping companies of all sizes to improve their impact, become more efficient and generate shared value. “By combining Sedex’s 10 years’ experience of responsible sourcing with the global reach of the World Bank Institute, the Open Supply Chain Platform will deliver a step change in the uptake of responsible behaviours and practices by businesses”, said Carmel Giblin, Sedex CEO. “It will foster governance, sustainability and social development impacts in global supply chains”. (Blue and Green Tomorrow)
New study shows that effective metrics, training, and leadership are key to creating supply chain sustainability
According to a new report by PwC US and the APICS Foundation, new sources of value can emerge when companies broaden their perspectives on sustainability and adopt clear strategies to tap ethical, economic, social and environmental levers across their extended supply chains. Sustainable Supply Chains: Making Value the Priority, a survey of global operations executives who are members of APICS’s professional network, shows that companies are realising the significance of sustainable supply chain initiatives; however, multiple challenges continue to impede widespread adoption of sustainability. The survey found the biggest barrier to the success of a company’s sustainable supply chain practices was a lack of leadership support, which means that mid-level management is not able to take the steps needed to drive meaningful change in the supply chain. “It is widely accepted that supply chain sustainability is a priority for many CEOs, but this is a complex business issue that brings with it multifaceted challenges at the management level,” said Sharon Rice, executive director of the APICS Foundation. (Sustainable Brands)
Diversity
Women now on boards at all FTSE 100 manufacturing firms
All of Britain’s top manufacturers now have women on their boards but more must be done to end male dominance in the sector, industry leaders have said. Manufacturers’ organisation EEF found one in five directorships at FTSE 100 manufacturing firms are held by women, but it dismissed calls for quotas to be introduced to boost the number. Its Women in Manufacturing report suggests nurturing young talent and shedding the industry of manufacturing’s “dirty and unglamorous” image is the best way to transform the gender balance in the boardroom. It found that women accounted for 64 of the 305 board positions at the 28 manufacturing firms in the FTSE 100. Women hold at least a quarter of the posts – a target set by the former trade minister Lord Davies – on the boards of 36% of the top firms, the report said. The EEF chief executive, Terry Scuoler, said: “The message from this report is clear – manufacturers are heading in the right direction, but cannot afford to let up.” (The Guardian)
Environment
Australian coal bonanza could provoke ‘catastrophic climate change’
Australia is planning to open nine new “mega mines” in an area larger than Britain, which geologists say could yield at least 27 billion tonnes of coal. The deposits in the Galilee basin are among the biggest global reserves of thermal coal — the type most suited to electricity generation. However, exploiting them would make the area the world’s seventh-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. The University of Technology, Sydney, has calculated that if all nine mines planned for the Galilee go ahead then, in 16 years’ time, the yearly extra emissions will equate to putting another 7.59 million cars on the road. As the unlocking of the Galilee basin’s huge reserves of coal draws closer, international environmentalists are mobilising to block the mines. Bill McKibben, the US founder of 350.org, the movement dedicated to slowing global warming, says the effect of using these coal reserves will be global. “Just six or seven places on earth have concentrated stores of carbon as big as the Galilee and unless the carbon within them stays in the ground, catastrophic climate change is a certainty,” he said. (The Times)*
Seeing future in fuel cells, Toyota ends Tesla deal
Japanese automakers Toyota has announced that it will allow a battery-supply deal with Tesla Motors to expire this year and focus instead on building cars running on hydrogen fuel cells, a next-generation technology that rivals Tesla’s all-electric systems. Toyota Motor invested $50 million in Tesla to acquire a 3 percent stake in the Silicon Valley startup in 2010, and signed a $100 million joint-development deal in 2011 for a version of Toyota’s RAV4 crossover sport utility vehicle that carried Tesla’s electric powertrains. But the electric RAV4 has sold poorly, whilst Toyota has increasingly signalled that it sees fuel cells as the most viable zero-emissions technology. Toyota is also the world’s biggest manufacturer of gas-electric hybrids and said its focus this year would instead be on its four-door sedan powered by hydrogen fuel cells, which it plans to introduce in California next year. (NY Times)
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