A few weeks ago, I journeyed to Paris to participate in and attend EcoVadis’ annual user conference, Sustain 2019. The annual event has grown dramatically over the past few years, with an estimated 700 people in attendance this year. The theme of the conference was #IgniteChange and EcoVadis’ co-Founder and co-CEO, Pierre-Francois Thaler got right to the point by saying that you cannot solve exponential problems with linear solutions (and, that the problems with climate change and the environment are exponential). The size and growth of the conference is a clear indication of the interest that global businesses have in Corporate Social Responsibility (“CSR”) and Sustainability. And, although these are topics/areas where US businesses are well behind their global brethren (in terms of focus, investment, and action), there are larger forces at hand that will continue to drive CSR and Sustainability into the business spotlight. This is and will be an opportunity for procurement to increase its relevance and impact. The conference included a broad array of speakers including, scientists, thought-leaders, and other experts as well as an array of CSR and procurement executives. Some notes and highlights of the event follow.

Just One Word: Plastics

Once upon a time, Dustin Hoffman learned that there was a great future in plastics. Fifty-two years later (in 2019), Patrick Thomas, Chairman of Johnson Matthey plc and the Founder of the World Plastic Council believes that there is a great future in plastics reuse. Thomas delivered a keynote presentation, “Plastic Pollution: Sources and Solutions,” which had as its main premise that plastics are far too valuable to end up in the ocean or landfill and that reuse is the answer. Thomas shared a few plastics factoids:

• Less than 9% of all plastics are recycled
• At the current pace, in 2050, the weight of all the plastic in the ocean will outweigh all of the fish
• 80% of the plastic impact on the ocean comes from developing countries in Asia
• Plastic naturally degrades in 600 years

Early in his presentation, Thomas asked the question, “What do you do when your house is flooding?” Answer: Step one is to turn off the tap. While having the chairman of a specialty-chemicals company presenting on sustainability felt a bit like welcoming a fox into a hen house, the presentation was compelling and polished. Thomas takes the position that the environmental impact of replacing plastics with alternatives would be worse and therefore strongly urges for the creation of a “circular economy” for plastics. In this cycle, plastics would flow around a ‘closed loop’ system, that would drive reuse and keep the value of plastics in the economy without leakage into the environment. Thomas believes that a plastic circular economy must be comprehensively designed and include elements like the banning of all plastics from landfills. Until a design is completed, Thomas believes that procurement and sustainability professionals can start to make an impact with their employers by:

• Engaging in the design of your company’s supply chain
• Demanding that suppliers design packaging for collection and reuse or recycling
• Insisting that products and packaging are designed for collection and reuse or recycling
• Viewing ‘circularity’ as an opportunity to create brand loyalty

Supply Chain Innovation that Results in a Better Product

Sustainability presents another great opportunity for Chief Procurement Officers and other procurement professionals to support and drive a large enterprise-wide initiative. To that end, I moderated a panel of sustainability and CSR executives that looked at a plethora of areas for value chain innovations to result in better, more-sustainable, and cost-efficient products and solutions. Two of the panelists and their companies had participated in industry-wide transformation that resulted in genuinely more sustainable businesses.

Sustainable Procurement Leadership Awards

At the end of Day One, in an event MC’d by EcoVadis’ CMO, Emily Rakowski, the event host announced the winners of its third-annual Sustainable Procurement Leadership Awards and Sustainability Leadership Awards. The awards recognize companies for a variety of achievements in CSR, including “stakeholder engagement, supplier engagement, supplier portfolio CSR performance improvement, program leadership, and regional performance.” They also seek to recognize EcoVadis customers that are making strides toward improving CSR and sustainability efforts globally.

Winners of this year’s Sustainable Procurement Leadership awards include: Clariant, for Best Internal Stakeholder Engagement; Air Liquide, for Best Value Chain Engagement; Henkel, for Best Portfolio CSR Performance Improvement; and Cécilia Frasnetti, Saint-Gobain, for Outstanding Program Leadership. EcoVadis then awarded more than a dozen organizations for their Sustainability Leadership – by category, region, and corporate grouping (for a complete list, please click here). Congrats to all awardees and honorable mentions!

Final Thoughts

EcoVadis continues to expand its solution footprint (watch for a future article covering the latest solution release) and its customer base as it operates as the major, but also lone, player in a market that is bound to grow over the next decade. While the US has major business and political constituents positioned against any type of green initiatives, there is an inevitability to the environmental movement gaining a much stronger position in the US. Meanwhile, the almost all of the other first-world nations are taking big, green strides forward; EcoVadis is well-positioned to support the companies that are leading the way.

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