How organizations are working to address the myriad social, environmental and operational issues that can arise in complex supply chains
Ecodesk recently announced that 25 companies representing one million suppliers have joined its VIP Enterprise Innovator Program aimed at developing a clear and unambiguous business case for supply chain efficiency. Read More...
In an effort to support long-term crop stability and help coffee-farming communities mitigate the effects of climate change, Starbucks this week announced the expansion of its $70 million comprehensive ethical sourcing program with a new farming research and development center in Costa Rica. Read More...
Nike today announced a partnership with Swiss company bluesign technologies to broaden the supply of sustainable materials and chemistries for use in Nike products. Read More...
The Co-operative Group, Nestlé and Sainsbury’s say they will improve the sustainability performance of some of their products in response to research from the Product Sustainability Forum.The study, published by the Waste and Resources Action Program (WRAP), analyzed 50 grocery products with the biggest environmental impact and found that together they contribute between 21 and 33 percent of household greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Some of the products include such staples as bread, potatoes, bananas and milk. Read More...
Dunkin’ Donuts will set a target date to source all of its palm oil from sustainable sources or purchase offset certificated covering its sourced palm oil, according to a recent announcement by New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Read More...
Sheba Entrées For Cats announced that by the end of 2013, all of the brand’s U.S. recipes will include only responsibly sourced fish — even adding sustainable salmon to the menu. Read More...
The food system is not a machine, but this is how we have treated it in the last 50 years. With the growth of industrial food production, manufacturing and distribution, we have seen a vast range of short-term benefits and a swathe of longer-term challenges. Read More...
The World Wildlife Federation (WWF) released analysis of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) showing only a handful of member producers are making adequate progress towards t Read More...
Starbucks will begin sourcing 100 percent of its palm oil from certified sustainable suppliers by 2015, according to a recent announcement.The coffee company made the change in response to a shareholder resolution filed by the Green Century Balanced Fund, a mutual fund concerned with environmental responsibility. Read More...
Häagen-Dazs has partnered with General Mills to invest $125,000 dollars over two years in Madagascar’s Sava region to encourage sustainable agriculture in one of the world’s most important vanilla production centers. Read More...
Last year’s United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro concluded under a cloud of ambiguity. Some organizations called it an outright failure while others deemed it a moderate success. Read More...
Water scarcity has been recognized by the United Nations as one of the most pressing problems facing the 21st-century world. Although 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is water, nearly 1.2 billion people, or one-fifth of the human race, live in areas of physical water scarcity, and another 1.6 billion face economic water shortages. Read More...
Truvia, a global producer of calorie-free sweeteners, won carbon footprint certification last month within two years of initiating its sustainability program in 2011. Read More...
The World Resources Institute (WRI) launched an online tool last week that uses current, high-resolution data to map water risk worldwide. Read More...
Government must lead the way to developing a food policy that moves beyond the current customer-focused, cheap food culture towards a more sustainable long-term system, according to a new publication released by the Food Ethics Council. Read More...
Ocean Spray Cranberries gained a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases on top of a 40 percent savings in transportation costs by making smart process changes to one of its primary transportation and distribution routes, according to a new case study. Read More...
Organic standards outline specific criteria for the growing and processing of organic agricultural products related to environmental safety. But at this time they do not include provisions guaranteeing strong labor safeguards. Read More...
Most of us who visit these pages are quite familiar with how Walmart used its influence to drive sustainability improvements in its supply chain. But were the gains really about sustainability at all? Strictly speaking, no.Indeed, the most anyone can say about the effects of Walmart’s strategy on its supply chain is that improvements in eco-efficiency, ethical sourcing or what have you may have been made (all good things), but not necessarily in sustainability performance, per se. Costs, too, may have declined and that's always a good thing as well. But to equate decreases in, say, the carbon or water intensity of products with improvements in sustainability performance is to make a serious category error. Read More...