P&G Launches the Latest Supplier Sustainability Scorecard

Procter & Gamble, the company behind brands as diverse as NyQuil, Pringles, Tide and Duracell, has launched a scorecard to measure the environmental impacts of hundreds of suppliers, share practices and encourage improvements.

The Supplier Environmental Sustainability Scorecard looks at energy, water, waste and greenhouse gas emissions. The scores that suppliers receive based on their performance will influence the overall supplier rating that P&G gives them.

The scorecard will initially be rolled out to 400 suppliers throughout P&G’s entire supply chain. One of the goals of the scorecard is to help suppliers either move forward with their efforts or to get started on working towards sustainability.

Suppliers are asked to provide details on electrical and fuel energy use, water input and output, Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions, waste sent to landfill or incinerated, and hazardous waste disposal. Suppliers can also report on what P&G sustainability initiatives they have adopted and what ideas they have suggested that P&G adopted. Optional categories on the scorecard include renewable energy use, transportation fuel efficiency and potential waste material that is recycled, reused or recovered.
{related_content}
The scorecard uses measurement standards and protocols from the World Resources Institute, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Carbon Disclosure Project.

Since the initial group of P&G suppliers are all different sizes and spread throughout 33 countries, both developed and developing, P&G chose worldwide-accepted standards. Some of the feedback that P&G received from a pilot test of the scorecard by 20 companies was that suppliers wanted to use a scorecard that was universal and flexible, said Rotha Penn, P&G sustainability media relations.

After the first year of having the scorecard in place, P&G will spread it beyond that initial group of 400 suppliers. For the first year, Penn said, P&G is aiming to get a baseline for where its suppliers are at, so a low score won’t hurt a supplier, but a high score will be beneficial.

The scorecard was developed over 18 months along with P&G’s Supplier Sustainability Board, which includes more than 20 leading P&G suppliers. P&G is making its scorecard public and open for any other organizations to use, hoping that it helps lead to an industry standard.

Earlier this month, the healthcare industry saw its first supplier scorecard announced by Kaiser Permanente, and for the past few years Walmart has put more and more focus on its supply chain with its packaging and sustainability scorecards.

_{Pringles – http://www.flickr.com/photos/rexroof/ / CC BY 2.0}