Go green or risk fading to black
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
Last Updated: Tuesday, 13 November 2007
By Lucinda Schmidt
Green procurement is gaining traction in the corporate world. Although it’s not yet mainstream, many big companies are now pushing triple bottom line and corporate social responsibility requirements deep down into their supply chains.
That means that you – the small supplier at the bottom of the chain – need to start taking notice.
In fact the term “green” procurement is probably too narrow. What the leading big companies around the world are talking about is sustainable procurement. That means their suppliers must tick all the boxes on environmental issues – reduced packaging, less pollutants, energy efficiency, water conservation and the like. But that’s not enough. They also need to treat their workers fairly, offer a safe workplace and purchase their own inputs in a sustainable fashion.
Hewlett-Packard, for example, adopted the Electronics Industry Code of Conduct in 2004, and has now signed up 557 of its biggest suppliers. The code covers a wide range of issues, including the environment, ethics, how workers are treated and safe working conditions.
“It’s a huge responsibility for us as a manufacturer to look at social and environmental responsibilities within our supply chain,” says Annukka Dickens, environmental manager for HP South Pacific, adding that HP operates the IT industry’s largest supply chain, worth $US50 billion a year.
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When a supplier signs up to the code, they are required to do a self-audit, which HP then reviews. HP will also audit some (115 suppliers so far have been tested).
If a supplier does not conform to the code, HP will ask it to prepare an improvement plan within a set timeframe. Termination, says Dickens, is a last resort.
HP might be an industry leader, but others are taking steps in the same direction. Suzanne Little, an executive director of Good Environmental Choice Australia, has spent the past three months training about 100 procurement officers from big companies and government agencies on how to measure whether a product really is green.
True green procurement, she says, looks at the entire lifecycle of a product, from manufacture to disposal.