October is always a dynamic and busy month for the sustainability industry.
Suppliers to Walmart receive their annual influx of emails kindly demanding each to complete an assigned number of Sustainability Consortium Product Sustainability Toolkits. These emails serve as a "gentle" nudge to manufacturers and brands, reminding each of the work they have or have not completed since the last survey.
Based on the number of registered companies at the time of this blog, 5,799 manufacturers and brands were logged on to SAP’s Product Sustainability Network answering one or more of the over 100+ surveys created by The Sustainability Consortium. All participating companies were also introduced for the first time to Walmart’s Project Gigaton Survey, which seeks to track organizations targets and goals relevant to the retailers' ambitious commitment to reducing a gigaton of GHG emissions from its supply chain.
In the building product industry, it is almost time for the U.S. Green Building Council's annual GreenBuild Conference. October means that Manufacturers are busy preparing relevant documents, releasing sustainability reports, new product transparency documents, and hurrying along product certifications to highlight at the conference. Just last week, the Health Product Declaration Collaborative announced a new third-party verification process intended to introduce some added quality and rigor to the material transparency program which houses over 2,700 different product specific HPDs.
With such activity, the month of October also brings a significant number of new job postings. Many of them driven by activities surrounding TSC, Walmart and GreenBuild. Here is a summary of jobs we posted over the last month with direct ties to these initiatives.
Supervisor Audit Sustainability Reporting & Quality Assurance - Hershey
Global Director of Sustainability - Bon Appetit
Product Sustainability Manager - Shaw Industries
Sustainability Specialist - Blommer Chocolate Company
Professor Sabine Benoit from The Surrey Business School's Department of Marketing and Retail Management sent me an interesting article that explains in part, why these jobs even exist. Her research highlights what is called “the chain liability effect”. As she explains, “when it becomes publicly known that products are associated with suppliers that engage in unsustainable behaviors, consumers protest, as Nestlé, Zara, and Kimberly Clark, among others, have learned. The phenomenon by which consumers hold firms responsible for the unsustainable behavior of their upstream partners suggests the notion of “chain liability.”
You can watch a short 3 minute video on the concept at this link.
The idea of “chain liability effect” is exactly what TSC is seeking to influence through many of its KPIs. Each manufacturer is scored based on its ability to provide evidence of enhanced responsibility in their supply chains. Similarly, the USGBC LEED rating system and Health Product Declarations are seeking to create enhanced responsibility of supply chains by promoting product transparency. Specifically, with HPDs, it is expected that manufacturers control, disclose and then optimize the chemicals and ingredients, used by their suppliers, that are included in the manufacturers finished product. These programs are seeking to minimize the “chain liability effect" associated with poor control of supply chains.
The jobs from the four highlighted organizations are intended to manage this process of sustainability governance in the supply chain.
Outside of the Walmart and USGBC influence, Adobe and McDonald’s both posted interesting jobs this month that are designed to minimize the “chain liability effect” proactively.
Principal Campaign Marketing Manager – Sustainability & Social Impact - Adobe