GEMI Publishes Responsible Supply Chain Guiding Principles
GEMI Publishes Responsible Supply Chain Guiding Principles
Principles are intended to outline foundational elements that business leaders across industries believe to be essential when engaging suppliers on sustainability.
Washington, DC – The Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI), a global leader in developing insights, networking and creating collaborative sustainability solutions for business, today published its GEMI Responsible Supply Chain Guiding Principles. The principles are intended to outline foundational elements that business leaders across industries believe to be essential when engaging suppliers on sustainability.
“GEMI hopes that these Principles may provide a framework to help companies and industry stakeholder groups to guide the process for engaging suppliers regarding sustainability, advance strategic collaborations and, promote increased alignment across industry-focused supply chain sustainability initiatives” said Bill Gill, AVP Environmental Affairs, Smithfield Food and GEMI’s Chair.
Through GEMI’s SCS Work Group, GEMI sought input from a group of large multi-national corporations, 3rd party providers and industry associations to inform GEMI’s development of the Principles. This work included a June 2017 GEMI Workshop where representatives from a variety of organizations – including the American Chemistry Council, CDP, Ecodesk, EcoVadis, Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition, Electric Utility Industry Sustainable Supply Chain Alliance, Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative, Plastics Industry Association, Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council, The Sustainability Consortium, Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production and others –shared information on principles guiding their respective supply chain sustainability efforts and explored commonalities across industries.
“GEMI evaluated principles established by various industry sectors and 3rd party organizations, and facilitated engagement with many such organizations to inform our development of these Responsible Supply Chain Guiding Principles. As we continue to see a proliferation of new and different expectations for supplier sustainability performance, GEMI believes there is a real opportunity to promote further coordination across efforts while focusing on tangible results that drive long-term business value” said Steve Hellem, Executive Director, GEMI.
GEMI’s Responsible Supply Chain Guiding Principles follow the recent release of a GEMI Supply Chain Sustainability Solutions Map, along with a series of case studies examining why and how companies are utilizing certain supply chain sustainability solutions.
GEMI believes there is strong potential to increase coordination across industry efforts while further enhancing engagement, performance and business value through the supply chain, and will continue to facilitate cross-industry dialogue and action to address these opportunities through GEMI’s SCS Work Group going forward. Please contact Kellen Mahoney if you’d like to learn more about participation in GEMI’s SCS Work Group.
Special thanks to 2017 GEMI member companies and Supply Chain Sustainability project participants for their leadership and engagement in this effort, including American Chemistry Council, Ashland, Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable, Carnival Corporation & plc, Corn Refiners Association, Ecolab, ExxonMobil Chemical, FedEx, Gannett Fleming, Hexion, IPIECA, Merck, Plastics Industry Association, P&G, Perdue Farms, Schlumberger, Sealed Air, Smithfield Foods and Smith & Nephew. Special thanks also to Mary Beth Jordan, MBJ Strategies for her work in supporting this effort.
The GEMI Responsible Supply Chain Guiding Principles may be downloaded at: https://gemi.org/gemi-responsible-supply-chain-guiding-principles/
About GEMI
GEMI (www.gemi.org) is a global leader in developing insights, networking, and creating collaborative sustainability solutions for business. For 25 years, GEMI has captured the vision and experience of global corporate environmental, health and safety (EHS) and sustainability leaders from diverse business sectors through the development of a wide range of publicly-available, solutions-based tools designed to help companies improve the environment, their operations and add business value
