White House fact sheet: reducing GHG emissions across the supply chain

 Here are the details from President Obama’s Executive Order that intends to the Federal Government’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 40 percent over the next decade from 2008 levels — saving taxpayers up to $18 billion in avoided energy costs — and increase the share of electricity the Federal Government consumes from renewable sources to 30 percent.

Complementing the effort, several major Federal suppliers announced commitments to cut their own GHG emissions.

For the record, here are excerpts from the White House Fact Sheet:

“Together, the combined results of the Federal Government actions and new supplier commitments will reduce GHG emissions by 26 million metric tons by 2025 from 2008 levels, the equivalent of taking nearly 5.5 million cars off the road for a year. And to encourage continued progress across the Federal supply chain, the Administration is releasing a new scorecard to publicly track self-reported emissions disclosure and progress for all major Federal suppliers, who together represent more than $187 billion in Federal spending and account for more than 40 percent of all Federal contract dollars.

“Since the Federal Government is the single largest consumer of energy in the Nation, Federal emissions reductions and progress across the supply chain will have broad impacts.  The new commitments announced today support the United States’ international commitment to cut net GHG emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, which President Obama first announced in November 2014 as part of an historic agreement with China…”

Mondelez moves to third-party sustainability evaluation

Mondelez International, the multinational snack foods giant, is developing an outcome-based sustainability framework that will use an external party to measure the impact of its $200 million Coffee Made Happy program.

Mondelez, the world’s second largest coffee company, says the arrangement with the independent third-party organization, the Committee on Sustainability Assessment (COSA), will “provide unprecedented transparency on large scale” along the coffee supply chain.

Mondelez coffee brands include Jacobs, Carte Noire, Kenco and Tassimo. COSA will evaluate the “real impact experienced by farmers on the ground” of the Coffee Made Happy program. Program objectives aim to measure how Coffee Made Happy is achieving its objectives to improve farmers’ business and agricultural skills, increase farm yields and “engage young people and women in coffee farming so as to empower one million coffee entrepreneurs by 2020.”

Significant emissions reductions lacking across supply chains

Companies have yet to post significant emissions reductions across their supply chains despite the opportunities those actions would mean for cost savings, according to the Carbon Disclosure Project and Accenture.

That disheartening conclusion from an environmental sustainability perspective was revealed in A New Era: Supplier Management in the Low-Carbon Economy, the CDP’s fourth annual global survey of the preparedness of company supply chains for climate change impacts.

Can Supply Chains Reduce Emissions and Costs?

It’s not necessarily an either/or proposition. Logistics managers trying to optimize supply chains for sustainability and emissions reductions face a tough question: how to implement those goals without breaking the bank.

The conventional thinking is that there’s always tradeoff: A transport company can reduce its CO2 emissions along a supply chain, but at a higher operating cost. Often much higher.

Findings released last month during a webinar sponsored by Finished Vehicle Logistics magazine suggest that in certain cases at least the best of both worlds is possible.

Shining industrial rooftops

Warehouses and distribution facilities may be emptier inside than usual these days, but the rooftop space above is a great and largely untapped solar energy resource.

Distribution facility developer ProLogis, which was hard-hit last year by the collapse of the real estate industry, is on the cutting edge of what could and should be a bright business and  sustanability opportunity in the logistics and warehousing arena.

The Denver company has formed a Global Renewable Energy Group that will oversee the procurement, development  and management of new eco-friendly properties while providing management services for renewable energy projects, including a major push to provide rooftop space for solar energy installations.

One of the group’s first management efforts was announced recently: A new, 4.8-megawatt (MW) solar project that will be installed on eight rooftops at the ProLogis Park Sant Boi in Barcelona and ProLogis Park Alcala in Madrid, Spain. It’s a co-development arrangement with San Francisco’s Recurrent Energy that also marks Recurrent’s first foray into Europe.

Hep cat: Puma’s sustainable paw print

The German “sportlifestyle” company Puma is an old hand at a relatively new corporate exercise, the sustainability report.

The footwear, apparel and accessories designer published its fifth sustainability report last week. The 121-page opus covering the 2007/2008 reporting period was released exclusively online “for environmental reasons.”

In the latest sustainability report Puma sets a goal to reduce energy and water consumption and “waste creation” 25 percent by 2010 based on its results during its 2005/2006 reporting period.

It’s “only” five sustainability reports but the company issued its first such report in 2001, virtually the dark ages for the term “corporate social responsibility.”  So Puma is in its tenth year of CSR reporting. Most other companies are on their first or second, or have yet to start. Puma’s experience shows in the organization and depth of its CSR programs.

The report details the company’s progress to enhance working and social standards in its supply chain, build capacity at its suppliers’ factories, broaden its range of sustainable products and reduce the company’s environmental footprint through the PUMAVision category puma.safe.

It also outlines PUMA’s activities in supporting artists and creative organizations through the puma.creative category and initiatives to support global peace through puma.peace.

Puma says the Puma SAFE concept “creates a symbiotic relationship between our environment, employees, business partners and other stakeholders.

“Our aim is not only to make the production of our products transparent and environmentally friendly to our partners and target groups, but also to continually improve our standards,” the report says.

Full integration of environmental policy remains “a big challenge…our long-term economic prospects depend on embedding environmental protection and sustainable development in our business strategy” by eliminating harmful substances in products and controlling air, water and land emissions.

Puma says it was the first sporting goods company to ban PVC (polyvinyl chloride) from its product range because production and disposal of PVC can damage the environment. Puma instead works with alternative products such as polyurethane, silicon, ethylene vinyl acetate or rubber.

It has a strict restricted substances list that can be found in the 109-page puma.safe Handbook, Environmental Standards.

The company chairs the Federation of European Sporting Goods Environmental Committee and has established Environmental Key Performance Indicators to track its environmental performance.

More recently it has extended this monitoring to its logistics and supply partners “whom we invite and support to develop their own environmental management systems.”

Puma says it adhered to strict environmental and energy-saving standards when it built its new company headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany. It features a 1,000 square meter (10,764 square foot) photovoltaic power system coupled with another 140 square meters (1,507 square feet) of solar modules built into window facades. The company says this will save 35 tons of CO₂ a year.

For the first time Puma tracked the CO₂ emissions of its logistics operations worldwide, “taking onto consideration the transport from the country of production to the main warehouses worldwide, where the final distribution to retail stores occurs.

Puma found that across all transport modes it hauled more than 119 tons of freight in 2008, producing 64.1 tons of CO₂ emissions. The biggest emissions came from sea and airfreight transportation providers.

Puma says that in cooperation with its main logistics provider, Maersk Line, “we continue to explore possibilities to reduce the environmental ‘paw print’ of our logistics operation. Options include the use of combined sea-air shipments to avoid longer air transport segments, consolidation of shipments to ensure the greatest efficiency and as far as possible direct deliveries to avoid “unnecessary transport gaps.”

Because it is still early in this process Puma has not yet developed CO₂ emission reduction targets for its logistics operations. It voluntarily reports its CO₂ strategy and emissions, including logistics and direct suppliers, each year to the Carbon Disclosure Project.

Bookmark & Share

Will green finally do the trick for collaborative transportation?

Maybe…and let’s hope so.

That’s the question that Dan Gilmore, the editor-in-chief of SupplyChainDigest is asking today in his interesting First Thoughts column.

Read his discussion: Gilmore’s First Thoughts in SCDigest