Supply chain News and trends

BT has announced a new programme aimed at reducing business customers’ e-waste by recycling end-of-life equipment and helping them achieve their targets for a circular economy.
BT says its new service with Cisco will reduce e-waste and support a more sustainable world. It’s the latest step in BT Group’s Manifesto pledge to move to circular products, networks and operations by 2030, and then extend this across its supply chain by 2040.

The new programme comes as organisations around the world are transforming their network and IT infrastructure to support the latest multi-cloud deployments, BT says. As part of this transformation, BT continues that its environmental specialists will work with customers to better understand and map the role of sustainability in a digital world.

As part of the service, replaced or decommissioned electronic equipment from a customer’s network will be shipped back to Cisco to be “responsibly” reused or recycled through its takeback and reuse programme. BT says up to 99.9% of what is returned will be reused or recycled.

Creating a more sustainable, circular economy, where we prioritise dematerialisation and avoid equipment going to landfill, is vital.

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Supply chain sustainability is a business strategy implemented by an organization to ensure its supply chain network has a minimum impact on people (human rights, the health and safety of employees) and the planet. In this blog, we’ll focus on the environmental side of supply chain sustainability, which aims to: 

- Reduce energy and water consumption
- Generate less waste 
- Adapt more energy-efficient systems/processes
- Manage inventory to avoid overstocking
- Reduce logistics-related impacts (emissions) 

 

According to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), global supply chains account for 80% of the planet’s carbon emissions. Of these, more than 90% of the companies in the supply chains are small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

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As sustainable business practices become more and more important to consumers, and as big corporations proclaim their commitment to sustainability, independent natural retailers point out that they've been leading in this area all along.

Their tendency to focus on organic products, local sourcing and minimizing waste has been core to their business strategies for decades, and they have often built customer followings based on those principles.

"We have held these values near and dear for 29 years," said Steven Rosenberg, founder and chief eating officer, Liberty Heights Fresh in Salt Lake City. "This isn't anything new to us. We feel we should all do our best to use less of the Earth's resources, whether it be water, clean air, healthy soil, less electricity, and certainly less carbon-emitting energy."

Likewise, Eli Lesser-Goldsmith, CEO of Healthy Living Market & Café in South Burlington, Vt., said his company prides itself on its nearly four decades of environmentally conscious positioning.

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Leading UK on-the-go food retailer, Greggs, has launched its first full sustainability plan, setting out its ten commitments to ‘help make the world a better place by 2025 – and beyond’.
Greggs’ ten commitments will focus on three key areas that align to the company’s values and where it believes it can make the most difference. These are:

Stronger, healthier communities: to play its part in improving the nation’s diet by helping to tackle obesity, providing free breakfasts to schoolchildren, and giving surplus food to those most in need.
Safer planet: to become a carbon neutral, zero waste business.
Better business: to increase the diversity of its workforce, and to use its purchasing power responsibly, with the aim of making things better in its supply chain.

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In its journey towards minimizing waste, is the packaging industry losing sight of the crucial importance of making its energy consumption more sustainable? Robert Lilienfeld, founder and executive director of sustainable packaging think tank SPRING, tells us more.

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Processes underpin everything a company does, from product conception to production, distribution and fulfilment. By making them more efficient, we can make the world more sustainable. But many of these processes have been developed in a piecemeal fashion, so they are incredibly inefficient. One third of all food produced globally, for example, is lost or wasted every year, and 80 per cent of that waste is caused by poorly executed processes such as supply chain inefficiencies, late deliveries and inaccurate planning. This food waste matters beyond simple nutrition. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the resources needed to produce the food that then becomes lost or wasted has a carbon footprint of about 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2, making food waste the world’s third-biggest carbon emitter behind China and the United States.

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Tackling food waste is vital to reducing carbon emissions and should be at the forefront of Australia’s climate policies, advocates say.

It is estimated that 7.3 million tonnes of food is wasted in Australia each year, costing the economy more than $20 billion annually.

Food waste is also a major environmental issue, with around eight per cent of global carbon emissions coming from wasted food, which rots in landfill and releases methane into the atmosphere.

Food rescue charity OzHarvest has recently teamed up with the Monash Sustainable Development Institute (MSDI) to release a new report examining Australia’s progress on tackling food waste.

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