By Karen Kortendick

When setting out to accomplish a goal, sometimes it’s the first few steps that prove to be the most challenging ones. So for a team of industry professionals involved in the Sustainability Initiative Team (SIT), a part of the Foundation for Strategic Sourcing (F4SS), Oakland, N.J., defining sustainability became a concerted group effort. Comprising executives from both the consumer-packaged-goods industry and the contract manufacturing and packaging supplier world, SIT came together to build industry-wide sustainability practices.

“Some of the world’s largest companies have seen the green wave crash ashore and are now attempting to reassemble what’s left on the beach… It’s obvious that the F4SS Sustainability Initiative Team (SIT) members are fast committed to collectively developing assessment, measurement and reporting standards relative to the contract manufacturing process in the CPG industry,” says Neal Levin, sustainability strategist at The SKAN Project LLC, Evanston, Ill.

As a result, SIT has established a baseline definition of sustainability to serve as the basis for the group’s efforts going forward. The F4SS SIT definition, relative to the relationship between branded marketers (customers), manufacturers and secondary packagers (suppliers), is:

To responsibly act to build a regenerative business cycle driven by consumer demand, customer demand and cost.

It has been a challenge for the group of customers and suppliers to both digest and align behind a common sustainability platform. “I will compare it to the work the early days of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) — people coming together who are in the same ‘field’ but have very different viewpoints that manage to get the adaptive work done,” says consultant Helen Eckmann, James L. Consulting, Del Mar, Calif.

Efforts Are Underway

To get started, the group was committed to answering basic questions: What are the inputs, the outputs, and the impact of our business on the environment and society? The focus is on looking at the entire lifecycle of products from raw material production to post-consumer disposal and regeneration.

For example, the inputs of the industry extend all the way back to the lima bean growers for the soups on stores shelves and in consumers’ homes. Here are some of the questions to ask:

»What water systems do the growers use to irrigate their crops?

»How are these farmers paid for their goods in relation to local cultural standards?

»What are the methods used to transport these beans to manufacturing facilities?

»Do product packages (primary and secondary) contribute to the growing landfill mass?

“Our team continues to build toward delivering adoptable measures and tools to add value. With companies like P&G, General Mills, Campbell Soup, Johnson & Johnson and their suppliers, we’re uniquely positioned to deliver immediate but ‘sustainable’ impact and change to the cause,” says Jeff Guillebeau, vice president of business development with Cincinnati-based Crescent Park, and co-chair of the F4SS’s SIT.

So, How Will This Get Done?

First, the SIT team defined 23 impact areas or “prototypes” under four buckets:

»Economic

»Social

»Environmental

»Governance

Each of F4SS’s member companies has been asked to establish a baseline to measure and collect data in what are believed to be the most relevant four impact areas, targeted under the environmental bucket. They are:

»Packaging

»Water

»Energy

»Solid Waste

The SIT team has identified “units of measure” that will be different and specific among many companies and product categories. For example, the Campbell Soup Co., a major player in the beverage business as well as soups, is more greatly impacted by “water” than Johnson & Johnson. Campbell’s metric for “water” is “gallons per adjusted case,” while J&J measures “water usage in gallons per payroll hour.”

As the team works toward F4SS’s Sustainability Summit in San Diego (Feb. 22-24, 2010), in addition to accumulating each member company’s metrics and goals for water, solid waste, energy and packaging, its asking each to complete the 15 questions in Wal-Mart’s Sustainability Product Index, unveiled on July 16, 2009. These two simple actions will help focus companies on a common framework upon which the team can build the foundation to drive sustainable change.

The final area of immediate focus for SIT is to create a Supplier Sustainability Survey to help facilitate moving the F4SS sustainability platform and responsibility to all tiers of the supply chain. The survey will assist by directing measurement and impact of third and fourth supplier tiers, whose efforts often are not visible to customers.

As stated in the SIT charter: “With the recognition of industry-altering concerns by branded marketers (customers), suppliers, consumers and the government over the use and abuse of finite natural resources and the availability and health of human capital in CPG manufacturing, the mission of the Sustainability Initiative Team (SIT) is to explore the environment and social impact that the CPG industry is or may be having and collaborate toward effective and profitable solutions in response.”

Karen Kortendick is director of corporate quality/continuous improvement at The Strive Group, Chicago, as well as the F4SS’s SIT co-chair.