What are Sustainable Supply Chains and Why are They Needed?

Can a Sustainable Supply Chain Benefit Business?

For companies, especially those with ‘legacy’ setups, it can often seem daunting – and very expensive, to make sustainable changes, and to do the hard work of changing over existing machinery and processes to be more eco-friendly, and there has been a temptation for some to seek out ‘carbon offsets’ as a way, not of reducing their impact whilst they arranged for a more permanent fixture, but as a way of shirking their duty – with the way information travels, and how the general opinion of non-sustainable business practices has been received with audiences across the world, this practice is on the decline.

By taking on the challenge, and making real sustainable change, there have been a number of companies, such as Nike – who have discovered that sustainability not only works on an environmental level, and as a marketing tool to attract customers, but can also help to improve efficiency, and lower costs.

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What is Available to Aid Sustainable Change?

Depending on your location, there may be grants, loans, and finance options available for businesses with a strong sustainable plan, in fact sustainable investments topped $35.3 trillion in 2020 as one of the world’s major financial markets.

When deciding whether or not to pursue a sustainable change to your supply chain, it’s important that you carefully evaluate your existing structure – what can be changed? How can it be done? How long do you expect to take?

Once you have the basics, you can then begin to lay the groundwork, and to do that, you need to consider:

1. What are the sustainability issues in the supply chain?
2. How can you address these issues?
3. Who are your suppliers? Are they operating sustainable practices?
4. Can you replace the suppliers who aren’t sustainable or refuse to change?
5. What impact does your product or supply have on local environments and communities?
6. How quickly can or should the change be made, in order to protect these communities?
7. What are the costs of existing practices, compared to proposed ones?

There is a lot of investigation that needs to be done, but people want to support sustainable business – whether that’s with sales, investments, or word-of-mouth. Businesses that want to get ahead, and make a sustainable future for themselves, need to consider every aspect of their operations.