Wednesday, 23 Oct 2019 14:36 GMT

Collaborating with suppliers in sustainability

Avery Dennison has been recognised for its work in scaling its sustainability risk and improvement programme across a global supply base, encouraging its suppliers to implement the best sustainable practices.

The manufacturer of adhesive materials, labels and tags was awarded the 2019 Innovations in Sustainability Award for its work with EcoVadis.

Avery Dennison accepted the accolade during the Sourcing Industry Group’s Global Executive Summit in California this month.

The companies combined their expertise to create Avery Dennison’s Sustainable Procurement Program, which monitors and promotes the improvement of the social and environmental efforts of its global supplier partners.

Launched in 2016, the programme operates through sustainability ratings and performance improvement tools.

Each year, suppliers representing over 80% of Avery Dennison’s direct spend on materials are rated by EcoVadis. They are then given a scorecard reflecting each of their environmental, ethics, labour and supply chain practices.

We know our supply chain affects the wider world, and we are proud to have developed a sustainability programme that aligns this with our scale and complexity

Using EcoVadis’ online system, suppliers can also share their scorecard with any customer or stakeholder.

Robyn Buma, vice president of global procurement for Avery Dennison’s Label and Graphic Materials and Industrial and Healthcare Materials businesses, comments: “Avery Dennison is honoured to be recognised with EcoVadis for our effort to make our global supply chain more sustainable.

“We know our supply chain affects the wider world, and we are proud to have developed a sustainability programme that aligns this with our scale and complexity and encourages our suppliers to implement best practices.”

Discussing the challenging nature of creating a programme without external collaboration, Buma adds: “We needed to navigate corporate social responsibility complexities, review sustainability best practices, measure suppliers’ performance against them, and also understand our own supply chain impact holistically.

“EcoVadis’ internationally recognised methodology and assessment platform was instrumental in helping us do this.”

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