HP, L’Oreal, Pepsi, Others Asking Suppliers For Emissions Info

Hewlett Packard, L’Oreal, PepsiCo, and Reckitt Benckiser have joined the Carbon Disclosure Project’s Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration, which wants to create a single standardized approach to measuring the carbon footprint of supply chains. The companies join Cadbury Schweppes, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Tesco, Imperial Tobacco, and Unilever, who signed on last fall. In December, Dell announced that it was joining the program. Wal-Mart has also partnered with the CDP on measuring suppliers’ energy use.

Each member of the Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration has selected up to 50 suppliers to work with them and to respond to the CDP pilot information request by March, 2008. Some members will work with suppliers at national level, others will work internationally.

“Participating in the CDP Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration is one of the steps that will help P&G achieve its new five year sustainability goals, which include improving the environmental profile of our products across their lifecycles,” said Dr. Peter White, Director, Global Sustainability, Proctor and Gamble. “Working within supply chains to innovate and reduce CO2, as well as other environmental impacts, will be a key part of this work.”

The project will be rolled out in May 2008, and CDP is inviting more companies to join the program.

“The Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration is a key step towards a unified business approach to climate change,” said Paul Dickinson, CEO of CDP. “By bringing together the purchasing authority of some of the largest companies in the world, CDP will encourage suppliers to measure and manage their greenhouse gas emissions. This will enable large companies to work towards managing their total carbon footprint, as the first step to reducing the total carbon footprint is to measure its size.”

The CDP information request gathers information on companies’ supply chains. It encourages suppliers to report carbon footprints and climate change-relevant information, such as greenhouse gas emissions data, emissions reduction targets and climate change strategy.

to the source