Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110

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GEMI launches Supply Chain Sustainability tool

The Global Environmental Management Initiative this week announced the availability of a new Supply Chain Sustainability tool that covers the soap and cleaning compound manufacturing sector.

"This new GEMI supply chain sustainability tool has been designed as a guide to help support and assist with strategic sourcing and procurement, by providing visibility into CO2e and water impacts within a financial context," says Bill Gill, assistant vice president, Environmental Affairs, Smithfield Foods and chair of GEMI as well as GEMI's SCS Work Group.

"We believe it is the first tool to offer a portfolio view of the supply chain, enabling trade-offs between impacts and across purchase categories.

"The first three product categories for this tool are paperboard container manufacturing, plastic film and sheet manufacturing, and soap and cleaning compound manufacturing - and there is clearly an opportunity to expand that list."

The tool was developed through a collaborative process by the GEMI Supply Chain Sustainability (SCS) Work Group, the University of Minnesota Northstar Initiative for Sustainable Enterprise (NiSE) and Climate Earth.

Timothy Smith, associate professor, University of Minnesota, who co-lead tool development and created the underlying science based models informing the tool, explains further: "This first of its kind browser-based tool allows a user to enter spending across purchase categories. SCS then calculates CO2e and water impacts and assesses alternative purchasing scenarios for each of the three featured categories.

"Although many have talked about the need for organisations to coordinate environmental improvement opportunities across sourced inputs, this is the first time that a user-based system has been developed to move the discussion into action."

Explaining the benefits of the technology, Steve Hellem, GEMI's executive director, says: "We are excited about this new tool because it will allow an organisation to estimate results of multiple scenarios or combinations of scenarios helping companies engage and focus on their supply chains and design more sustainable strategies.

"Our GEMI members recognise that a great deal of consumptive impacts of key environmental challenges such as CO2e and water are tied up within complex value chains. Given a wide range of opportunities, the SCS tool can quickly quantify multiple scenarios, a key step in moving forward with a better understanding of options that procurement professionals have at their disposal to make business decisions that provide value to their organisations while at the same time improving the environment."

Chris Erickson, CEO of Climate Earth and the creator of the platform for the SCS Tool concludes: "Climate Earth is pleased to be part of this new, innovative and first of its kind tool. The platform has been designed to be a simple, scalable, open and interactive tool for procurement and supply chain managers to help them better understand priorities and measure performance of sourcing strategies."

GEMI SCS Work Group project supporters included: Tennant Co; 3M; Procter & Gamble; Sealed Air; Anderson, Ashland; Biogen Idec; BNSF Railway; Carnival Corp; ConAgra Foods; ConocoPhillips; Eni spa; FedEx; Halliburton; Koch Industries; Kraft Foods; Merck & Co; Occidental Petroleum; Perdue Farms; Phillips 66; Smithfield Foods; Southern Co; Union Pacific Railroad, and WW Grainger.

The GEMI SCS Tool can be found at:
www.gemi.org

29th January 2015