A Green Global Supply Chain? Yeah, Right. Maybe Next Decade
If this is the decade of corporate responsibility when it comes to "going green" and reducing harmful carbon emissions, then we're all in a smelly garbage heap of trouble.
Print
A new Accenture survey of 245 supply chain executives finds that just 10 percent of companies actively manage their carbon footprints. Even worse, nearly 40 percent say they have no clue about the level of supply chain emissions in their supply chain networks.
It's particularly distressing that these results come from supply chain execs (it's not like Accenture was asking CEOs) and almost 40 percent of them hadn't a clue. These supply chain chiefs are ostensibly the men and women on the front lines tackling one of today's top corporate initiatives.
If the Accenture survey results are any indication, there's much more corporate "greenwashing" occurring than even the most cynical person can envision. (Greenwashing is "the unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue" by a person, company or government agency "to create a pro-environmental image, sell a product or a policy, or to try and rehabilitate their standing with the public and decision makers after being embroiled in controversy," according to SourceWatch.)
The survey did find that more than three-quarters (86 percent) of respondents had undertaken at least one green initiative in their organization's warehouses. But these actions were predominantly in the areas of "recycling and using natural light, lighting management systems and energy efficient bulbs."
Not exactly leading-edge stuff.
There are, of course, scores of other critical supply chain challenges right now, which could be garnering the majority of supply chain chiefs' attention. Those include: managing the promise and peril of Chinese sourcing; mitigating global risk; determining an effective vendor strategy; integrating ERP and CRM data streams with supply chain applications; and re-inventing the supply chain for the future. (For more on how companies are dealing with today's supply chain challenges, see articles on Wal-Mart, Apple, Nintendo and GE.)
But Jonathan Wright, senior executive in Accenture's supply chain management practice, notes in the survey that organizations that have achieved top-quartile performance in both cost-effectiveness and customer service are more than twice as likely as those that haven't to "actively model their supply chain carbon footprints and implement successful sustainability initiatives." And, he adds, those organizations have been able to lower supply chain costs as a result.
However, Wright notes that while the vast majority is taking a step or two to reduce carbon emissions, "most are implementing carbon-reduction solutions without understanding their carbon footprint and are therefore unable to measure real impact those solutions are having on their emissions."
In today's harsh economic environment, any corporate initiative that can't show an immediate and positive impact on the bottom line or a projected ROI is absolutely doomed. And with this dearth of carbon emissions understanding and concern, you can expect the greenwashing to blissfully continue.
Previous Post: Want to Save $10 Million or More on ERP? Don't Buy Oracle or SAPNext Post: Coming to a Mall Near You: The SAP Retail Store?
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
