A Greener Supply Chain to Promote Eco-friendly Products
Posted by Unknown in Ecology and Ecosystem, India, Supply chain, WWF on Monday, 13 May 2013
WWF’s green retail movement aims at promoting eco-friendly products and sustaining demand for the same
The
ever-growing human demand for resources is putting tremendous pressure
on biodiversity — threatening the continued provision of ecosystem
services, health and wellness of human beings.
To keep a check
on this pressure on environment, WWF has come out with a new model of
strategy — PPP (People, Planet and Profit). This model emphasises on
green retail across the globe, promoting green product lines and its
constant demand. Not only that, it is also finding new ways of
sustaining this green retail. For that, global demand for green lines,
WWF insists, is a must. This will result in triple gain: benefit people
as they will value products that don’t damage the environment; help the
planet to breathe better and facilitate (retail) supply chains to reap
profit in the process.
Ravi Singh,
CEO, WWF-India says “Human consumption is at a rate 50 per cent faster
than what the earth can sustain. Our ecological footprint has doubled in
the last 40 years and is on course to double again in the next 40. As a
whole the humanity extracted resources more than 52 per cent faster
than they could be regenerated eating into the existing stock of
forests, fisheries, grasslands, and other assets. Meanwhile the prices
for many of those assets have nearly doubled or tripled in the last 10
years according to World Bank Data.”
And therefore,
he adds, “WWF’s global green retailer movement will cover a wide
spectrum of issues from reducing energy, greenhouse gases, waste, and
chemicals, employee empowerment to innovation. However, the core focus
for the retail industry should be to ensure sustainable product lines
and sustainable supply chains.”
To make the PPP
model through the retail industry successful, WWF has recently been
able to pursue big supply chains of consumer products like Marks &
Spenser, Wal-Mart, IKEO, Carrefour to adopt proactive sustainability
agendas, particularly in establishing sustainable product lines across
their supply chains. Mr. Singh says, “Many retailers, as part of the
Consumer Goods Forum have even committed to taking deforestation out of
their supply chain and buying sustainable products, such as sustainable
palm oil, cotton, etc.”
Constant
efforts on promoting green retail in India including a seminar held in
Mumbai recently (titled Sustainability In Retail: A Triple Bottom-Line
Approach: as a part of Retail Leadership Summit-2013) show that efforts
are also being made by large companies to make a shift to more
sustainable supply chains due to increasing consumer awareness globally.
But promoting
this concept in India has its own share of issues. The general
perception is that the Indian consumers do not care much about product
sustainability unlike their U.S. and European counterparts. But the
latest green marketing techniques convey otherwise. For instance, says a
representative from WWF-India, “in 2008, the top-scoring consumers of
2010 were in the developing economies of India, Brazil, China, in
descending order. The survey results show that both cost considerations
and environmental concerns motivated consumers to adopt more
environmentally sustainable behaviour”.
New trends
indicate that global players are putting pressure on their supply chain,
which extends into developing countries like India and also their local
counterparts and partners. Retailers are evaluating their direct store,
distribution centre, and supply chain operations to uncover cost-saving
and workforce-enhancing opportunities.India has one of the largest
numbers of retail outlets in the world. The retail sector is
experiencing exponential growth, with retail development taking place
not just in major cities, but also in Tier-II and Tier-III cities.
Indian retail already contributes 10 percent of the GDP. So, it is
believed with big retailers/corporate houses initiating green retailing,
small retailers/shopkeepers will follow automatically.
