Color the Supply Chain, Green

The World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) mission is to build a future in which people live in harmony with nature and this is reflected in the organizations green retail movement.  The green retail movement aims at promoting eco-friendly products and sustaining the demand for the same. To alleviate the stress on the environment, WWF came up with a new strategy called “People, Planet, Profit”, or “PPP”. The strategy’s goal is to place emphasis on green retail across the world and promote green product lines. In doing so, the PPP plan hopes to benefit people as they will come to value products that don’t damage the planet and promote a healthier supply chain that reap profits.

Grow Green

As the world continues to grow so does human consumption. The CEO of WWF-India, Ravi Singh, said, “Human consumption is at a rate of 50% 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.” Singh then added, “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.”

Go Green

Companies like Marks & Spencer, Walmart, IKEA, Carrefour, and Nike have already adopted the sustainability agenda and are focusing on sustainable product lines across their supply chains. They are putting pressure on their own chains of suppliers to go green as well. With industry leaders’ help driving the efforts of an eco-friendly supply chain, the hope is that more companies, large and small, will soon follow suit to stay competitive and in business as the number of consumers demanding green products grows.