For example:

• The pilot program alone could lead to $24 million in annual savings for Cisco. (Girrbach provides the complete breakdown of savings by product here.)

• One product line reduced packaging by 33 percent and increased transportation load utilization by 50 percent resulting in $1.3 million annual savings.

• The most dramatic improvement for a product was a whopping 450 percent increase in transportation efficiency with savings of $1.8 million.

• More than 4 million pounds of materials were eliminated across the pilot products.

• Plus, Cisco made progress increasing recycling potential, reduced GHGs related to transport and decreased its energy and water use.

In the article, Girrbach details more specifics about Cisco’s accomplishments –and the challenges that remain. She points out that since nearly all of Cisco’s manufacturing is outsourced, the company needed to engage with its more than 1,000 suppliers in order to make improvements. Cisco partnered with its suppliers and emphasized how suppliers would share the benefits of improved packaging, Girrbach says.

Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), an organization that works in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to help businesses reduce waste and develop sustainable products, wants answers to questions like these, and so it has launched a study into the amount of waste in the UK retail supply chain created by pre-prepared food.

The landmark study will include four representative products –sandwiches, pizza, quiches, and ready-made meals –and it aims to:

• Calculate the associated carbon emissions and economic impact of these pre-prepared foods

• Identify the amount of water used and disposed of during the manufacture of these products

• Create “resource maps” to highlight waste generated at key stages in the chilled and frozen supply chains

Ultimately, WRAP wants to develop best practice guidance regarding storage, handling and packaging so that companies in the pre-prepared food categories can benchmark themselves and maximize opportunities for reducing environmental impacts and cutting costs.

The maps will also include WRAP data on levels of packaging and food waste from households, so that a whole chain can be seen and the ‘hot spots’ identified.

“Identifying where waste is generated, and the reasons why, will help the development of effective solutions which are tailored to these products, with learnings then applied across the category,” says Charlotte Henderson, Retail Supply Chain Programme Manager at WRAP. “By sharing these with the sector, we aim to help companies at all stages of the supply chain access these commercial and environmental benefits.”

Businesses interested in getting involved with the project should email resourcemaps@wrap.org.uk.

According to an article published yesterday at National Jeweler, much of what we’re now seeing in jewelry ads is nothing more than greenwashing –and it could be illegal.

In “Are your ‘green,’’fair-trade’ jewelry ads legal?” Suzan Flamm, Esq., assistant general counsel of the Jewelers Vigilance Committee, points out that sustainability claims are illegal unless advertisers have a reasonable basis for making them.

From the article:

Federal law prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” in print, online and TV advertisements, as well as in any promotional materials, including telephone marketing. The basic principles of advertising law are straightforward:

1. Advertising must be truthful and not misleading.
2. Advertisers must have evidence (substantiation) to back up their claims.
3. Advertisements cannot be unfair.

Jewelers can run into problems, Flamm says, because individual interpretations of terms like “green,” “eco-friendly,” “environmentally safe” and “fair trade” can vary widely. Plus, even though global supply chains are now complex and interwoven, it’s absolutely imperative that a manufacturer/distributor know all  product sourcing and manufacturing details before making any green or fair-trade claims.

Flamm’s advice? Play it safe, and only advertise what you can substantiate. That’s good guidance not just for jewelers, but for businesses in all sectors. As she concludes:

Specific claims are much easier to substantiate and are less likely to be deceptive than general claims. Since there is no universally accepted definition of either “green” or “fair trade,” the best way for companies to comply with the law is to narrow the claims made, using appropriate qualifiers. Doing so lessens the likelihood that a company will face FTC enforcement action or a Lanham Act lawsuit from a rival alleging unfair marketing practices.

Yesterday, Five Winds International, one of North America’s largest and most experienced consulting firms devoted to sustainability management, launched a website to help. The company researched retailers’ programs and developed specific tools to help suppliers understand how to get ahead of retailers’ requirements.
Designed specifically for brand managers and sustainability managers at consumer goods manufacturers, the new website includes:

• a free on-line calculator for suppliers who want to tally their score on Walmart’s Supplier Sustainability Assessment questionnaire.

• Retail Ready Insight™, a new tool for brand managers trying to understand how to get started with a sustainability program. (It provides a fast gap assessment and recommended action steps.)

• regular blog updates on key issues.

• A three-part white paper series, to be released on the webpage over the next two months, summarizing Five Winds’ research and providing strategic guidance and tactical steps for consumer goods suppliers.

“Ten years ago, we were working mostly with top consumer brands and niche “green” companies to understand sustainability issues, improve product performance, and help them grow their business and succeed in the marketplace,” says Five Winds’ Managing Director Dr. James Fava. “Now retailers are asking everyone to measure up to a much higher standard, and many companies are finding they need to catch up.”

The new webpage and first white paper article can be found here.

Since 2004, The Home Depot has reduced its U.S. stores’ energy per square foot consumption by 16 percent, and now –after a series of rather straightforward operational programs including the upgrading of store HVAC systems, aligning of stocking hours more closely with store operating hours, use of CFL bulbs and a switch to T5 lighting –the company’s U.S. store energy usage stands at 21 kWh per square foot.

Remarkably, The Home Depot estimates that over the past six years it has saved 2.6 billion kWh of energy —which is enough energy to power 203,000 homes for one year.

But, the company doesn’t want to stop there. The Home Depot believes it can reach 20 kWh per square foot of energy usage by 2015. How? According to a press release, the stores will continue to gain operational and energy efficiencies through:

• a move from 54 to 49 watt lighting,
• additional HVAC upgrades,
• installation of more white roofs, and
• shifted stocking hours to align more closely with  store operating hours.

These efforts, representing an additional reduction of approximately five percent from the current usage amounts, will bring the total reduction since 2004 to 20 percent.

In addition, like Walmart , Nike and others, The Home Depot is sharpening its focus on supply chain sustainability initiatives. Specifically, the company has set a 2015 target to reduce its domestic supply chain greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent from its 2008 levels.

The Home Depot says reductions in GHGs from its domestic supply chain will be largely the result of more efficient routing, scheduling and the consolidation of shipments to stores (again, relatively simple strategies aimed directly at improving  transportation efficiencies). Ultimately, the Company anticipates a reduction of 200 million miles driven per year –which equates to annual fuel savings of 25 million gallons or 8,000 trips around the earth.

It’s great to see The Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer, taking steps like these to reduce energy use and GHG emissions. The company is also expanding its Eco Options program, and back in December I wrote about the launch of The Home Depot’s Sustainable Cities Institute, an initiative designed to provide tools and resources to city leaders so that they can integrate sustainability principles into policies and practices.

Best Buy joins other retail giants such as Nike, Starbucks and Levi Strauss & Co., who are already BICEP members. BICEP is coordinated by Ceres, a leading coalition of investors, environmental and public interest organizations working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as climate change.

“At Best Buy we’re committed to building sustainable business practices and helping our customers realize ways to live more sustainable lives,” says Laura Bishop, Best Buy’s Senior Director of Government Relations. “ We are honored to join BICEP in their efforts to advance legislation addressing climate change and promoting a clean energy economy.”

According to its website, Best Buy has committed to reducing its operational greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through energy efficiency initiatives and renewable energy technologies. The company also helps consumers reduce their own energy footprint by offering more efficient products and packaging options, educating customers on using products more efficiently and offering an in-store recycling program for used electronics. You can read more about Best Buy’s broad-based  CSR initiatives here. Environmental sustainability initiatives are outlined here.

It’s clear that Best Buy, like the other sustainability leaders who are members of BICEP, recognizes the business case for meaningful action on carbon reduction and energy conservation. The company realizes that by  focusing on  key issues, such as green sourcing and procurement,  waste management, carbon footprinting and GHG management, it can lower costs, mitigate risks and  improve efficiencies –all while leveraging a powerful marketplace differentiator.

In particular, adidas Group reports that it is focusing its 2010 efforts on actions directed at these specific 2015 targets (each measured against a baseline of 2008 unless specified) :

Environment (Own operations )

• 20  percent relative reduction in energy consumption

• 30 percent relative reduction in carbon emissions

• 20 percent  water savings/employee

• 25 percent waste reduction/employee

Social Compliance (Labor/Health & Safety)

• 80 percent  of direct supplier factories to meet ‘3C’ (good) or better under our social compliance KPI rating (currently 50 percent of the direct suppliers meet this rating).

• 25 percent of direct suppliers are in a self-governance compliance model (where they take responsibility for their own performance) that includes reporting of key social and health and safety indicators.

• Common industry-wide monitoring platform used to check workplace conditions.

• Top 10 publicly listed suppliers are independently producing sustainability reports.

Employees

• To ensure succession readiness on all key leadership positions – 80 percent of senior management positions to be filled by internal employees.

• To be a World Class Recruiter (in terms of quality, cost, speed, ranking) – with a strong internal focus.

• To be a Top 10 employer in every key market and for its employees (based on market surveys and employee engagement scores).

The report also includes an extensive discussion of the company’s commitment to work with its suppliers (both direct and indirect) to ensure that workplaces are fair, safe and healthy. Plus, there’s a detailed analysis of the adidas Group’s supply chain performance data from 2009.

This year, the adidas Group report is built around the theme “Team Talk,” and accordingly, the review also includes stakeholders’ voices such as Greenpeace and LOCOG – the London Organising Committee for the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games – as well as stories from employees about factory audits and how site managers are rolling out the new environmental strategy.

M&S first launched its ethical and eco plan, called Plan A, in January 2007. Its overall goals included making M&S carbon neutral, sending no waste from its operations to landfill, extending sustainable sourcing, setting new standards in ethical trading and helping customers and employees live a healthier lifestyle.

With this week’s announcement, the company has made a commitment to 80 ambitious new initiatives, many of which are going to major impacts on the M&S supplier network. For example, M&S is planning to:

• Convert all 2.7 billion individual M&S food, clothing and home items (across 36,000 product lines) sold every year into ‘Plan A products,’ so that each carries at least one sustainable or ethical quality (e.g. carrying Fairtrade or Marine Stewardship Council certification or using free range or other sustainable ingredients). The company wants to convert 50 percent of its products by 2015 and 100 percent by 2020.

• Become the first major retailer to actively tackle and bring clarity to the living wage debate. M&S says it will do this by determining and agreeing to a fair, living wage before implementing a process to ensure its clothing suppliers pay this wage to their workers in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India. Based on a successful pilot in Bangladesh, the company feels it can successfully work with its suppliers to improve productivity and management practices.

• Work with M&S suppliers to provide training and education programs– including ones about basic health care and workers’ rights – for 500,000 workers in their factories. (Sounds similar to Apple’s “Train the Trainer” program.)

• Help suppliers create 200 ‘Plan A’ factories with either ethical or environmental features, or both, and encourage the 10,000 farmers who produce fresh foods sold at M&S to join the company’s sustainable agriculture program.

• Source all cardboard for M&S food packaging via a single ‘model’ forest program.

• Become the first major retailer to ensure full traceability of all the key raw materials used in its clothing and home products including cotton, wool, polyester, nylon, leather and wood.

• Become the first major retailer to ensure that six key raw materials it uses – palm oil, soya, cocoa, beef, leather, coffee – come from sustainable sources that do not contribute to deforestation, one of the biggest causes of climate change.

In addition, M&S is pledging to collaborate with employees, customers, NGOs and other stakeholders to expand sustainability initiatives even further.The company wants to:

• Increase the number of clothing garments its customers recycle every year from two million to 20 million, including through a partnership with Oxfam, significantly reducing the tonnage of clothing sent to landfill.

• Launch a five-year £50m Plan A incubator fund to support the development of innovative new ‘Plan A’ products and services at M&S.

• Encourage 21 million M&S customers to live a more sustainable lifestyle with the launch of a new competition – “Your Green Idea” – for customers to submit their ideas for ‘green’ actions for M&S to adopt. The winning idea will receive £100,000 to be spent on ‘greening’ an organization such as a school, charity or small business;

• Offer free home insulation and a free home energy monitor to all eligible M&S employees and giving them one paid, day-off a year to work in their local communities.

I agree with Sir Stuart Rose, Chairman of Marks & Spencer, who sees initiatives like these as critical components of risk management, competitive differentiators and fundamental pillars of business success today.

“Our extended Plan A will reach further and move us faster – covering every part of our business and reaching out to forests, farms, factories, lorries, warehouses and into our customers’ and employees’ homes,” he says. “We believe sustainability is a key ingredient of business success and that Plan A will continue to make us more efficient, develop new markets and build customer loyalty. It’s therefore not just the right thing to do morally but also makes strong commercial sense.”

Specifically, Safeway is drawn to the Consortium’s product life cycle assessment (LCA) mission.  The company wants to aggregate data from throughout its supply chain –from primary sectors such as agriculture, dairy, packaging and fishery through industrial food processing to retail delivery –and then use this data to create a corporate-wide supply chain policy that encourages sustainable purchasing and manufacturing practices for the organization’s direct and indirect buying.

According to a press release, by joining the Consortium, Safeway is building momentum for science with supplier partners such as General Mill’s, Procter & Gamble, and PepsiCo. Ultimately, the goals are to better understand the complete scope of industry’s social and environmental footprint and to refine existing efforts at the company to continuously improve performance.

Kudos to Safeway for taking these steps and becoming a leader in modeling life cycle inventories. As Linda Nordgren, Safeway Group Vice President of Supply Chain & Strategic Sourcing, points out, the company will be using the new data it collects to uncover opportunities for cost savings and competitive advantage.

“This important research will build an important bridge to creating the standards for metrics by which our industry measures itself against sustainability goals uncovering key opportunities to eliminate waste and preserve natural resources,” she says. “Creating actionable data on the lifecycle impacts of food and agriculture will assist Safeway in creating its Environmentally Preferable Purchasing policy.”

The consultancy reached this conclusion after compiling a series of its recent milestones, such as:

• In 2009, MBDC certified more than 100 products –which brings the total number of products certified to more than 300 since the program launched in late 2005. (200 products have been certified in the past two years alone.)

• 14 of these 100 products achieved Gold-level certification, Cradle to Cradle’s second highest level of achievement, more than in any other year. (The program has four achievement levels: Basic, Silver, Gold and Platinum.) At the Gold level, product manufacturers have eliminated chemicals assessed by MBDC to be a high hazard to human and environmental health, and final assembly processes must be powered by 50 percent renewable energy.

• In 2009, manufacturers of the 47 Gold-certified products committed to using more than 8,500 MWh of renewable energy, the equivalent of powering 760 US homes for a year.

• Also in 2009, MBDC expanded its consumer product certifications, working with clients including Nestle Waters North America, Method Products, Kiehl’s Since 1851, Aveda Corporation and Van Houtum Papier BV in the Netherlands. In addition, MBDC’s international client base grew to include companies in Spain, Germany, Italy and Japan.

Cradle to Cradle Certification by MBDC gives global manufacturers across industries a way to verify and market their products’ sustainability attributes and demonstrate environmental leadership. The certification process takes into account five distinct criteria:

• material health,
• material reutilization,
• renewable energy use,
• water stewardship and
• social responsibility.

Companies incorporate these criteria into future product development to create a continuous improvement and learning cycle –which in turn, can pave the way not only for innovation, but for improved risk management, cost reductions and competitive advantage, as well.

For example, Method Products, Inc., based in San Francisco, has used Cradle to Cradle Certification by MBDC to distinguish itself from the greenwash of other companies.

“Method is committed to making innovative products and packaging that are sustainable and green to the core, like our business,” says Adam Lowry, Method co-founder and chief greenskeeper. “Obtaining external verification from MBDC, the people who wrote the book on Cradle to Cradle design, reinforces the work we’re doing to make our products safe for people and the environment, and it reflects our authentic mission of sustainability at a time when many companies talk about being green.”