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specialreport SUSTAINABLE LOGISTICS
University who has conducted numerous studies on sustainable supply chains, with persuading the group to adopt a
broader focus. “Dale steered us away from ‘green’ and steered
us into the sustainability camp,” she says. The difference:
While green initiatives focus primarily on carbon footprint
issues, sustainability also takes into account social responsibility and corporate good citizenship.
“Sustainability involves people,” Hothem says. “It is more
subjective, but we are looking at some quantitative measures
like safety, training, and development.” Sustainable measures
can also include things like community service and charitable donations, she adds.
Enrollment in the new program is done on a facility-by-facility basis. Participants first fill out an online questionnaire
for each facility they want to register, providing data on energy use, recycling, water consumption, community service, and
more. A representative from the Sustainable Supply Chain
Foundation will then visit the facility to verify those numbers.
Once the responses have been validated, the numbers provide the benchmarks against which subsequent performance
improvements are measured. Facilities will be able to achieve
silver, gold, or platinum status by demonstrating progress
against their own benchmarks. The program does not use
cross-industry—or even cross-company—comparisons.
Hothem explains that this allows for the wide variance in
warehouse operations—for instance, energy use for refrigerated
warehouses would vary markedly from non-refrigerated buildings. “There are so many variables, it’s hard to measure one
against another,” she says. By allowing members to establish
their own benchmarks, the Sustainable Logistics Initiative sidesteps those issues, she says. “You’ll measure what you’ve done on
your own rather than versus what your neighbor does.”
IMMEDIATE BENEFITS
As for the program’s cost, ILWA members pay a $200 enrollment fee for the first facility and $50 for each subsequent
site. There’s an additional $1,000 charge for the assessment
by the Sustainable Supply Chain Foundation.
Although the program carries a cost, IWLA leaders believe
the initiative will lead to immediate benefits for members. It
will allow them to tout their participation in an industry
best-practices initiative. And as facilities achieve specific sustainability goals, they can promote their newly attained silver, gold, or platinum status.
Left unsaid, but likely equally important as more businesses adopt sustainability goals, is that the members can assure
their old and new customers that they, too, are on board with
the movement. ;
Editor’s note: To learn more about the Sustainable
Logistics Initiative, tune in to our free “Monthly Briefing”
webcast later this month. Richard Bank, Linda Hothem, and
Joel Anderson, IWLA president and CEO, will discuss
IWLA’s initiative and why sustainability is important for
logistics and supply chain operations.
