Supply Chain Sustainability

When creating a sustainable business, reaching for a Net Zero pledge or simply striving to reduce the environmental impact of your organisation, supply chain is key.  

Your business does not exist in isolation; we react to industry changes, developments and effects almost daily, interact with other companies and sell to our customers who then may go on to sell again. This means that every business not only has a supply chain but is also a part of the supply chain for other companies.  

In terms of company impact, Scope 3 emissions account for up to 95% of an organisation’s overall carbon footprint and supply chain emissions account for 80% of Scope 3. Therefore, assessing and managing your supply chain, as well as your own business operations, is essential in reducing environmental impact.  

The Problem with Supply Chains  
 

The supply chain that businesses use can be problematic from a sustainability standpoint and all organisations, regardless of size, should work to guarantee sustainability and ethics from their suppliers.  

Within the majority of reporting frameworks, including EcoVadis and the Green Protocol, the health of your supply chain plays an integral part in the impact of your organisation. This means that the sustainability and ethical values of the suppliers you choose not only reflect on your business but also impact your sustainability performance.  

This impact reflects waste management, pollution and carbon footprint amongst other environmental issues. However, within the supply chain you also face social risks, including working conditions, fair pay and modern day slavery.  

With the sustainability efforts of your supply chain affecting your company’s impact to such a degree, assessing the progress and performance of your suppliers is vital.  

How to Check Supply Chain Condition 


Companies can approach their suppliers with a variety of different checks to guarantee the quality of their supply chain. These can include performing questionnaires, audits or training where necessary.  

It is becoming fairly common practice to present suppliers with questionnaires on their values, performance and stance on modern issues. This allows you to examine if products or business are as sustainable as possible and align with your ethics. The process also urges suppliers to develop sustainable practices whilst gathering key information for your own reporting and decision-making process.  

Audits of supplier sites can also be performed (with the supplier's permission) to ensure that they are performing at an optimal level and again to encourage the development of sustainable practices.  

Providing training and coaching to suppliers shares knowledge of your own business efforts, as well as common industry struggles, and demonstrates expectations on what a supplier should offer you.  

Collaboration on projects for sustainable development can also be incredibly valuable. This is a strategy that we adopt within Techbuyer; we worked with our supplier, Direct Foam and

Packaging, to develop a sustainable packaging solution that we now use across our UK warehouse to limit our impact. This packaging solution, EcoStrata, is made up of 70% recycled materials and is also fully recyclable to reduce the impact of our waste on the environment. EcoStrata is now marketable for our suppliers, and we managed to create a successful project because of our shared values.  

It is also important to recognise and reward performance where possible. Thank You's for being a sustainable supplier, and aiding sustainable development within your own organisation, go a long way when working with other businesses and shows that you value their contribution and efforts.  

Whilst these may be good practices for large organisations, smaller businesses face more difficulties approaching suppliers. Large clients have more sway over supplier performance as they don’t want to risk losing their custom. They also have more resources to send personnel on external audits and develop relationships with suppliers. 

Supply Chain Assessment for SMBs 
 

For smaller businesses, as well as large enterprises, it is important to shop around. Find suppliers that align with your values and are public about their sustainability efforts. The more they share and are vocal about their achievements, and even shortcomings, the better. 

Look for sustainability ratings/scorecards, when assessing if a company is right for you. Finding suppliers that adhere to recognised scorecards or ratings, including EcoVadis, have been externally assessed on their performance. This shows that they are serious about reducing and managing their own impact. 

Attending supply chain sustainability courses is a great way to learn more about what you can be doing to assess the health of the companies you work with. Organisations like, Supply Chain

Sustainability School, offer courses and resources to look at supplier performance.  

Trials with suppliers, including packaging providers, are often free or come with a small charge, making this a great way to try before you buy for many organisations. We recently conducted a sustainable packaging trial with CircoPack who encourage reuse by asking the customer to return packaging once the product arrives.  

Whilst this wasn’t a solution that worked with our business model after testing, the principles of the organisation align with our own and we can see the benefits of the packaging, particularly for subscription services or consumer facing organisations. 

“We conduct regular trials for new solutions and being an SME (as opposed to a larger organisation) means we don’t have to wait for a lot of sign off to run them. We can be more agile and flexible thanks to our size. It’s exciting to see what we can do!” - Astrid Wynne Rogers 

It is also important to share sustainability news and achievements with your suppliers to encourage their own efforts. If they see that it matters to you, they're more likely to adapt to prevent losing you as a client.  
 
 

Prioritising Sustainability Within Your Own Organisation 
 

In most cases, your company is also a supplier within your customers’ supply chain. Therefore, you must be able to prove your credentials when asked for them. It is becoming increasingly important to measure and manage your own impact as customers begin to need this information for their own reporting.  

You now must be able to show that you are the most sustainable option to win and retain many clients because of Net Zero Pledges, government legislation and changing attitudes.  

According to a 2019 survey by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), 65% of its corporate members used environmental metrics to inform supplier management and hold their business partners accountable to supply chain sustainability goals. 

Similarly, according to Nielsen, in the USA nearly half of all consumers asked said that they would change their purchasing habits to reduce their environmental impact.  

These two stats demonstrate that sustainability practices and reporting are essential for retaining and gaining customers in both the B2B and B2C spheres. 

When dealing with your downstream suppliers it is important to communicate your performance, efforts and achievements. If you receive questionnaires, fill them out honestly and look to learn from the questions they ask you:  

“Requests for sustainability credentials come from either ratings agencies like EcoVadis (on behalf of other companies) or through the public sector via their frameworks or tender processes. In keeping up with legislation we can be warned to what is likely to appear in them. We have found some of these external questionnaires helpful: the questions they pose sometimes lead you to wonder if you can do more in some areas – what is best practice and what can we learn?”- Astrid Wynne Rogers 

Undertaking sustainability training allows you to positively improve the impact of your organisation, which has as many benefits for internal motivation as it does with customer attraction and retention. At Techbuyer, we offer our IEMA accredited sustainability training to each of our employees to share knowledge around our business and find out where we can improve in each department.  

Becoming a Sustainable Business Both Internally and Externally 
 

Becoming a sustainable business is about more than your own internal efforts. Sustainability is all about helping the world around us and so we can’t look to improve impact in isolation. The business world is far too connected to focus solely on internal efforts and your organisation has a wider reach that impacts our environment and communities.  

At Techbuyer we aim to help businesses improve their environmental impact through their technology. We supply businesses across the globe with high-performance and sustainable IT solutions that meet the demands of their workloads without compromising on environmental best practice.  

As a supplier, we try to be as open, honest and communicative as possible to protect the relationships that we have with our customers. As a business, sustainability is at the heart of what we do and we continue to improve our own business impact in line with this value.  

An important aspect of our sustainability credentials and efforts is offering IEMA accredited training to companies around the country as well as our own employees. Our Head of Sustainability and Chartered Environmentalist, Astrid Wynne, delivers training on both sustainability for the workforce and net zero. To find out more about our training opportunities and to get booked onto a course fill out the form below or head to our IEMA training page here.