MAKING CHANGE, BOX BY BOX
IWLA announced its initiative in July and subsequently made
it available to its membership base. Hothem, who is CEO of
Pacific American Group and a senior adviser to Matson
Global Distribution Services Inc., says the idea grew out of
conversations among the group’s executive committee members about the market’s increasing interest in all things green.
Third-party service providers are seeing growing
demands from customers and potential customers for evi-
dence of sustainability efforts, says Bank. “Companies big
and small are asking and in some cases demanding that
[3PLs] have sustainability programs before issuing a con-
tract,” he says. “This program will give customers some
sense of assurance that 3PLs are engaged in sustainability.”
Conversations on how to demonstrate that opened the
door to developing the program. “We were bemoaning the
fact that the industry did not have any metrics [on sustain-
ability],” Hothem says. “The construction industry had LEED,
but in logistics, we really don’t have any of those metrics or
any sort of certification process. We decided to take the initia-
tive to determine what the logical metrics would be.”
MORE THAN GREEN
Although the program started out as a green initiative, its
scope has since expanded beyond environmental stewardship. Hothem credits Dale Rogers, a professor at Rutgers
