Sustainable supply chains still poorly managed, claims review

Sustainable supply chains still poorly managed, claims review

A new study has found that only 10 out of the 430 companies that were analysed have dedicated staff in place to manage their supply chain sustainability, meaning that, on the whole, management information in these companies could be insufficiently up to date.

Acquisti & Sostenibilita, the Italian sustainable procurement organisation, performed The Sustainable Supply Chain Review 2014. Reports on sustainability from businesses in 40 different countries across the world between January and August 2014 were collected and studied, with the organisation concluding that much work still needed to be done in terms of managing and maintaining sustainable procurement.

56.5 per cent of companies claimed to evaluate their suppliers based on criteria of sustainability, while 44 per cent of companies trained their staff in supply chain sustainability. But only 15 per cent employed full-time managers to monitor and maintain sustainability in the supply chain.

Two thirds of companies were found to define the factors of sustainability across the supply chain. Furthermore, although over half the companies polled looked for sustainability in their suppliers, the number that used dedicated evaluation tools like Ecovadis or Sedex was just over a third.

The report claimed that: "It is clear the lack of evaluating, monitoring tools that can measure suppliers' sustainability levels represents a weakness, since it is left to internal systems with an insufficient updating and interrupted process."

The review included firms operating in food and beverage, textile, automotive, electronics, telecom, clothing and retail sectors. Of these, Deutsche Telecom was rated the best performing company, with Heineken, Adidas, Nestle and McDonalds making up the remainder of the top five.