MARCH 2009
3/11/09 Comparing Coffee Standards
Sooner or later, it has to happen. The raters are rated. Jorrit
Reintjes has written an excellent M.A. thesis for Rotterdam's RSM
Erasmus University on "How Do You Take Your Coffee Production?" He
rates eight standards for sustainable coffee supply chains. Coffee is a
good product to start with. It's legal, calorie-free and is addictive
yet has healthful properties. They say that when human life becomes
extinct on earth the beetles will survive. In the same vein, at an NYU
Stern seminar last week, the consensus among panelists was that in the
deepest recession, coffee sellers will thrive. The
eight coffee standards are FairTrade (FLO), Utz Certified, Common Codes
for the Coffee Community (4C), Rainforest Alliance, Globalgap, Organic
(EKO), SA8000 and Sara Lee's Global Standards. The highest ratings went to the stabdard-setting bodies that are members of the ISEAL Alliance. (The full thesis is not available pendings defense and academic publication.)
APRIL 2008
4/9/08 Supply Chains Maturing Toward Social and Environmental Sustainability, CSRWire. GM Holden, the Australian arm of General Motors, which is adopting the "Greening the Supply Chain" program of the World Environment Center (WEC). GM Holden is greening 17 factories using computer monitoring to increase energy efficiency, and by reducing water consumption. Food services provider Sodexo is green sourcing by switching to a less toxic dishwashing detergent and system that conserve resources. Ecolab Apex combines a compact solid detergent that saves energy in transportation over bulkier liquid detergents with computerized logistics that calculate site-specific "rack to guest ratios" to minimize water and energy consumption. The sustainability movement values collaboration over competition, a key underpinning of the new Fair Factories Clearinghouse (FFC) Sharing Platform, which allows member companies to benefit from one another’s compliance audits and remediation efforts. This initiative helps solve the redundancy problem whereby multiple companies inspect and audit the same factories, creating audit fatigue for factories. Intertek, which offers supply-chain compliance solutions, launched a similar initiative, the Connected Sources supply-chain compliance software, in partnership with Trace One, a web solutions provider. Connected Sources offers a Self Assessment Solution that measures supply chain management against sustainability criteria, as well as a Risk Assessment Tool that allows flexible weighting of sustainability criteria to extrapolate the implications of different courses of action.
|
|
