Page 250 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

238 LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT HANDBOOK

Although the product developer chooses the materials and can control or
influence how the product is made, the major drivers to environmental impacts
are controlled by the companies in the supply chain. Since there were several
LCAs of P&G product categories showing that key supply chains are the pri-
mary contributors to potential environmental impacts, the company started
to explore how to expand its sustainable supply chain management system
(SSCM) to include environmental sustainability metrics.

10.3 How Might the World's Largest Consumer Products
Company Measure and Drive Sustainability in its
Supply Chains?

Starting in 2008, P&G conducted limited surveys to understand how large,
medium and small manufacturers around the world viewed sustainability, if
they had goals to improve the environmental sustainability of their operations,
and the metrics tracked. The basic findings at that time were:

• Energy, Waste, and Water metrics are commonly tracked at the
corporate level and there is a wide range of sophistication and
capability in measuring relevant metrics related to operational
efficiency and environmental protection.
• Regulations, followed by corporate customer incentives or pres-
sure, appear to be the biggest drivers to implement sustainability
improvements, targets, and company-level tracking.
• Companies that set public sustainability goals appear to make
progress, whereas those without goals do not.

The P&G Purchases organization knew from previous experience that sup-
plier collaboration is key to delivering any supply chain-related goal, and the
same would be true for P&G's sustainability goals. To this end, P&G started
a Supplier Sustainability Board with more than twenty of its leading suppliers
from around the world. The intent was to find a way to encourage compa-
nies to set sustainability goals, and develop new or improve existing capabili-
ties to track important equipment and facility parameters related to resource
efficiency and environmental protection. Environmental science, engineering,
and business experts from these diverse companies worked collaboratively to
develop measurement system principles for a scorecard to be used in P&G's
Annual Supplier Performance Management process. These principles included:
Collaboration, Flexibility, Simplicity, Consistency, and ensuring efforts are
based on sound science and reflect life cycle thinking. Over the course of eigh-
teen months, the Supplier Sustainability Board used those principles to guide
development, and those efforts included numerous debates, ideas, processes,
formats and tests.