Amanda Stone
What is Responsible Sourcing Strategies?
Creating and maintaining a responsible and resilient supply chain has become a key success factor for food and agriculture businesses in this ever-changing globalized world. Third-party verification of your responsible sourcing program provides transparency to your supply chain, manages potential risks and innovates to create positive environmental and social impacts. The verification reinforces that your suppliers grow or produce food using efficient, safe and ethical field or factory environments.
Why Choose SCS?
Benefit from our four decades of sustainability assessment and certification experience in the food and agriculture sector. Drawing from extensive industry knowledge and best practices, SCS’ global network of auditors and assessors can provide customized and innovative solutions in developing a responsible/sustainable sourcing program based on client’s supply chain needs and business strategy or recommend improvements in the existing program. Our advisory and verification services can help you better understand the risks and advance towards sustainable practices within your supply chain.
- Basic Process
- Service Offerings
- Areas of Expertise
- SCS Expertise
- Program Documents
The process can vary depending on industry, product type, and company goals, but usually begins with SCS conducting a Needs Assessment to determine the level of engagement. This iterative process takes an in-depth look at current sourcing practices in order to define appropriate goals and steps forward. The final outcome is a comprehensive proposal with deliverables designed to meet the stated responsible sourcing objectives.
We can support your efforts to build a sustainable supply chain in several ways:
- Benchmarking with existing schemes and standards
- Code of conduct development and review
- Education and training of staff and suppliers
- Hot spot analysis to target priorities for your supply chain
- Life cycle assessment to evaluate impacts
- Piloting supplier audits/assessments
- Responsible sourcing policy
- Risk-based ranking systems
- Supplier performance verification
- Supplier questionnaires
- Sustainable sourcing criteria and metrics development
SCS has analyzed production methods and conducted supply chain and chain-of-custody verification systems for a diverse array of raw material and consumer product sectors across the economy. Examples include:
- Agriculture: Food and Beverage, Biofuels, Bio-based Products, Horticultural Products
- Climate: Carbon Footprints, Carbon Offset Projects, GHG Management
- Electronics: Components
- Health and Wellness Products: Botanicals, Supplements, Cosmetics
- Forestry: Wood Products, Pulp and Paper Products, Packaging
- Green Building: Building and Construction Materials, Furniture, Adhesives and Coatings
- Industrial: Chemical inputs
- Life Cycle Assessment: Environmental Product Declarations, Comparative LCA
- Mining: Conflict Minerals, Precious Metals and Gems
- Seafood: Fisheries and Aquaculture
- Textiles: Apparel, Upholstery, Geotextiles
- Water: Water Footprint
- Developing and supporting customized responsible sourcing programs (For example, see Starbucks Ethical Sourcing)
- Works with you from start to finish, from consultation to implementation
- Global network of auditors
- Can work directly with all of your suppliers to clearly communicate your goals, and gather and validate evidence of conformance
- Goes beyond Tier One suppliers
- Works with single commodity supply chains and multiple products/inputs
- Works with software solutions provider to ensure proper data collection and reporting mechanisms are in place
- Collects the stories and data for marketing, CSR reports, or other stakeholder reporting needs
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Amanda Stone
Related Resources
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Case StudySustainable Sourcing in the Coffee Industry
Cooxupé, the world’s largest coffee cooperative, with over 18,000 members — more than 97% of whom are small producers…
