Taking Carbon Footprint Measurement to a New Level: Supply Chain Sustainability Needs Robust Metrics, Say Gary Hanifan and Seb Hoyle (Sustainability‪)‬

In a few short years, carbon emissions have become a hot topic for both businesses and consumers. A recent Accenture survey of more than 10,000 global consumers found that 90% of them would be willing to switch to a new, more environmentally friendly product--and that 25% have already made changes in their buying behaviours. (1) That's genuinely good news, and not just for the planet. Accenture's Supply Chain Mastery research, looking at the attributes that make a high performance supply chain, found that the best performers have already taken steps to integrate sustainability within their fulfilment operations. From recycling to packaging reduction, and from sustainable sourcing to products designed with reuse in mind, name a green issue and there will without doubt have been progress. For within the business, reducing a supply chain's carbon impact often turns out to reduce its cost as well. Not surprisingly, then, today's supply chains are distinctly 'greener' than those of a few years. But to manage carbon emissions well, they must first be measured in an accurate and comparable way. This was initially a complex task for the transport industry at a corporate level--where a company establishes its carbon footprint--with the added complication of common reporting standards being slow to appear and gain consensus. So, with freight and logistics providers already facing a demand to report the carbon emissions generated by their businesses, the rise of a new form of reporting request--from customers who want to know the carbon footprint of individual products along the entire supply chain--has added a new layer of complexity.