Supply Chain Management Blog : Carbon Footprint

CDP and Supply Chain Carbon Reporting

christianverstraete — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:09:00 GMT

Around this time of the year, many companies are looking for the by now famous CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) report. And the 2009 report is on-line. But that's not the only information available. For the first time CDP has also issued their first...(read more)

It all starts with Design for the Environment

christianverstraete — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:26:00 GMT

Building greener products requires putting the environment right in the middle of the product design process. Indeed, that's where 80+% of the impact of the product on the environment are defined. Many companies seem to forget this. Design for the...(read more)

How did HP become a "Green" Company?

christianverstraete — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:37:00 GMT

On Monday, Newsweek released their inaugural Green Rankings , and interestingly, HP finished at the top. In an article, titled " The Greenest Big Companies in America " they explain they decided to publicize this list to recognize the efforts...(read more)

Green for Dummies ... a couple thoughts

christianverstraete — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:09:00 GMT

There is a lot of discussion about Green IT, and there is a reason for it. According to the " Smart 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age " report from GSI and The Climate Group, "In 2007, the total footprint of the...(read more)

Sustainability, don't demotivate us

christianverstraete — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:23:00 GMT

In an earlier blog, I mentioned that I was going to present at the European Conference of the Supply Chain Council, which I did by now. The presentation preceding mine was on sustainability and I really looked forward to it as I was looking for understanding how well HP's efforts were stacking up in our quest to develop a more sustainable world.

I have to tell you I came out of the presentation with mixed feelings. Not that HP is doing badly, but because the speaker was rather cynically putting a whole number of things back in question. For example, when companies calculate their carbon footprint, do they take everything into account, do they look at methane emissions and converts those to CO2 equivalents, are they not taken for a ride when they go for a carbon offset program etc. Scientifically he may and probably is right. However, I would argue that the importance today is to have companies gain conscience of the issues and start addressing them. Being scientifically 100% correct will come, but let's learn to crawl before we walk, and walk before we run.

One of the examples he was giving, was the fact that Walker Crisps had carbon labeled their chip bags in the UK. He showed a bag with a logo saying 75 gram of CO2 had been emitted in the manufacturing of this bag of chips. He put in question whether everything had been counted, and whether 75 gram was correct.

Interestingly I have heard a presentation from the project manager from Walker in another conference a while ago. He recognized that this was their best assumption, but more importantly that, because of the fact they had done this exercise, the R&D department was now hard at work to reduce the number to something in the area of 15 gram. They knew how to do that already and were performing the tests.

This is where my argument comes back in. Whether 75 gram and 15 gram can be proven scientifically and whether they include every single emission is one thing, but more importantly today is the fact that Walker Crisp believe they can reduce the CO2 emissions for this product by 80%.

I would argue we need to do two things in parallel, reduce the emissions, and any mechanism to motivate our companies to do so is valuable, while in the background we improve our models and measurement mechanisms. My fear is that if we disguard the initiatives taken by companies today, we will not get anything done. And that would be disastrous for our planet.

When carbon initiates the debate ....

christianverstraete — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:02:00 GMT

About two months ago, I wrote an entry for this blog, labeled "BOS and BOC, two new acronyms to get used to". I was actually far from imagining this was going to be the entry that received most feedback, both through the blog, but also through numerous e-mails, calls etc. This actually demonstrates a couple things, first, that a number of you are reading my entries (thank you for that), and second, that carbon and everything related to the environment is a hot subject. So, let me take a minute to go a little further in my thoughts around the subject.

Yes, I believe many of us agree that something needs to be done, that eating fruit that is imported by plane for example, does no longer makes sense. However, it is often not clear for consumers how much CO2 is actually emitted during the processing or manufacturing of a product. But is it for the manufacturer? I would argue that, in many cases it is not. Carbon labeling is starting in the UK, and that seems to change the perspective of a number of companies already. But what is more important, is that it forces companies to understand their supply chains and manufacturing processes. CO2 is actually a measure of the energy consumed. So, reducing CO2 reduces the use of a scarce resource whose price has been going through the roof lately.

Now, you may argue that the prices have gone down again, so that we should not worry. I wouldn't dare to bet on that. In an initial stage, people have started looking at alternative energies (wind, solar, sea etc.), and although that may help reduce CO2 emissions further, it should not be the only thing people do. The fundamental question is how much energy we really need to manufacture and distribute a product. Starting from that mindset, the fact of looking at how reducing CO2 emissions, helps companies reduce their costs.

The question is obviously, how to do this. And here the understanding of the supply chain comes again. Let me take an example. If I know that a full truckload of products (e.g. 18 pallets) has been shipped from point A to point B and that the truck returned empty, I can calculate reasonably quickly how much CO2 was emitted by unit of product, if I know the distance between A and B, the average consumption of the truck and the number of items per pallet. I can identify the cost of the empty return and review how to address it. It is obviously a little more difficult to find a payload for the returning truck, but now I have a financial and environmental measure of what I could save if this happened. The supply chain visibility we talked about in the last couple blog entries, plays an important role here. Receiving the relevant information from the partners becomes critical. In the example above, it is key to obtain the information from the logistics and transportation partners. From a technology perspective, multiple approaches are possible. Let's discuss those in a next blog entry. Your feedback is, once more, highly appreciated.

Carbon Footprint, you know yours?

christianverstraete — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:21:00 GMT

Two weeks ago at the green Supply Chain conference in London, Carbon Footprint was at the center of the discussions. And one of the topics referred to extensively was how to calculate carbon footprint. It’s actually a very good question and numerous efforts are being undertaken to find a standard way of doing so. Unfortunately, standards will take time and if some scientists, who predict the absence of ice on the North Pole in September, are correct, we may not have such time available. So, what do we do about it?

One of the speakers was very pragmatic. Regardless of the method used, he said, keep doing the same things; all what counts is that you improve. It really made me think. Are we not too often trying to find the ultimate, scientifically correct, method, rather than getting things going? Occasionally we need a pragmatist to tell us what really matters, isn’t it?

The second topic was how high to go in the Supply Chain. Should we go all the way to the raw material extraction company? And in that case, how do we get people cooperating all along. The above comment about the pragmatist made me think. What if each company calculates its own carbon emissions and how they relate to their products. If we all to that, the carbon footprint from my product is the sum of the carbon footprint from each of the components comprising the product, complemented with the emissions generated to transport and manufacture the product itself. By developing an IT infrastructure that allows the propagation of this information, an easy and pragmatic way of estimating carbon emissions could be found.

On the carbon topic, carbon labeling was discussed. As you may know Tesco in the UK is putting emphasis on adding carbon emissions on the packaging. In the example described, the Carbon Trust was used to calculate the actual emission, but what was interesting, beyond the number, was that printing the number on the package got as side effect that the manufacturer immediately started to look at how they could reduce that number. And the good news is that they already know how to do so.

The WWF just issued a report on how information technology can help reduce carbon emissions. The report titled “The potential global CO2 reductions from ICT use” not only addresses the energy reductions that can be achieved in the use of IT equipment, but also how IT equipment can help reduce energy consumptions from buildings, vehicles and manufacturing facilities through optimizing operations. The goal, reducing emissions by 1 billion tonnes. Let’s hope our industry can help achieve this ambitious objective.

How do you feel about your carbon footprint?