From SCDigest's On-Target e-Magazine
- March 10, 2014 -
Supply Chain News: Sourcing Practices Continue to Gain Scrutiny from Environmental and Other Consumer Groups
Oxfam Rates Leading Food Companies on a Variety of Sourcing and Sustainability Measure; Should Supply Management Lead Charge for more Formal Strategies?
SDigest Editorial Staff
The scrutiny of large companies relative to sourcing practices continues to grow.
Last week, our TheGreenSupplyChain.com reported on how activists from environmental group Greenpeace were somehow able to enter Procter & Gamble's famous "twin towers" headquarters complex in downtown Cincinnati, from which they made it to the 12th floor, broke windows, and unfurled two 60-foot long banners protesting P&G policies relative to sourcing of palm oil. (See Palm Oil Battles Continue, as Greenpeace Accesses Procter & Gamble Headquarters, Unfurls Protest Banners.)
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There is actually quite a drop off in the scores between the top three names (Nestle, Unilever, and Coca-Cola), and the bottom seven companies. |
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Greenpeace has targeted other consumer packaged goods companies relative to palm oil sourcing as well, claiming companies are sourcing from sources that are cutting down rainforests and destroying habitats to large plant palm tree farms.
Companies are being scrutinized not only by Greenpeace but a growing number of other organizations. Those in the consumer products sector are arguably the most vulnerable to public criticism of their practices, fearing some kind of consumer backlash. They are also natural the companies and brands most well-known to consumers and so the critiques are more likely to stick, versus say industrial companies that few consumers know or ever interact with their brands.
SCDigest believes that many companies need more formal strategies to monitor and manage these myriad groups, versus the more reactive approaches it seems most companies employ.
Another such organization evaluating consumer products companies is an UK outfit named Oxfam, which is primarily focused on addressing poverty across the globe, but has linked that effort with sourcing and other business practices at leading consumer goods firms.
It maintains a scorecard of those practices along a variety of dimensions for 10 of the world's leading food companies, giving them a grade on each of the sub-categories, and then a total score under a campaign it calls "Behind the Brands."
The sort of launch point for the scorecard uses an interesting approach of showing a number of leading individual consumer brands (e.g., Cheerios), and then after clicking on the image it displays the parent company (General Mills).
The evaluation criteria are:
• Land
• Woman
• Farmers
• Workers
• Climate
• Transparency
• Water
(Sourcing and Procurement Article Continues Below)
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