In this presentation, which I delivered to China's Supply Chain Council's Annual conference, I spoke about how to integrate sustainability across the supply chain. It was a discussing where we debated "green" vs. "sustainability", and which firms will focus on over the long term

1. Integrating Sustainability
Throughout the Supply Chain

2. Redefining Sustainability
Moving past

3. The Catalysts of Change
Internal Catalysts
• Costs pressure
• Stability of Supply
• Risk Reduction
• Achieving Scale
• New Opportunity
External Catalysts
• Consumer demands
• Investor returns
• Government Regulations
• Environmental Crisis
• NGO/ Media
Government
MediaNGO
Industry
Assoc
Competitor
Community
Rating
Agency
General
Public
Distributors
Investors
CustomersEmployees
Suppliers
Customers
Founders
Organization
Stakeholders

4. In China, stakeholder are being catalyzed by different constraints
……..constraints that were far more personal than “carbon”
Labor Safety
Consumer Safety
Urban Planning & Urbanization
Food & Agriculture
Landfills & eWaste
Overpackaging
Healthcare (Elderly & Family)
Resource Management
Traffic and Transport
Air, Food, and Water Quality
Income Gap – Poverty Alleviation
Catalyzing the Catalysts

5. Projects are:
• Short timeline/ clear definition in nature
• Require significant upfront planning with little long term benefit
• Have clear result/ measurable with limited potential impact
• Opportunity for “splash” – press, public awareness, education, etc
Programs / Platforms are:
• Longer term in nature with preparation time/ infrastructure that can
be leveraged
• Opportunity for “scale” – creation of platform for building out/ up
• Requires dedicated vision, planning, and staffing
• Deeper level of long term impact possible
Systems are:
• Longer term in nature with investments in process, equipment, and
people
• Goal is to “scale” with long term impact KPIs as benchmarks
• Requires separate vision, planning, and staffing
The Basic Definitions

6. Examples:
• Moratorium on off shore oil drilling
• Raising deposits on new home sales for 2nd time buyers
• Free plastic bag ban campaign
• Factory closures
• Law enforcement monitoring of migrant districts
Projects
Benefits of Projects:
• Management responsibility is easy to define
• Easy to justify and implement as a pilot program
• Can result in, or appear to be, a quick win
• Can provide breathing room while a real solution is found
• Does not (typically) require a significant investment in
infrastructure, talent, or process
• Can be killed easily – internal and external visibility is
(typically) low

7. Programs/ Platforms
Examples:
• Ban off shore oil drilling / implementing hybrid standard/ car sharing
• Limiting the amount of apartments 1 family can own
• Plastic bag ban campaign
• Factory efficiency upgrades
• Providing incentives for migrants to return home
Benefits of Platforms:
• Management awareness, engagement, and ownership
across business function and organization
• Leveraging the lessons of projects
• Able to capture measure of scale
• Can be owned by a BU/ department

8. Systems
Examples:
• Banning petroleum based energy product/ investing in urban planning & public transport
• Payment of annual property tax on properties owned
• Plastic bag manufacturing ban with product take back
• Economic restructuring and removal of energy consuming industry
• Promoting incentives for migrants to stay
Benefits of Systems:
• Management awareness, engagement, and ownership across
business function and organization
• Full benefits of scale – financial, infrastructural,
organizational, and external
• Stability – removal of gaps and inconsistencies in multi-
project system
• Risk – Reduced risk of external pressures forcing decisions
• Profit – top line and bottom line opportunities to improve

9. Systemic Wastes

10. Xerox: Zero to Landfill
Backdrop:
 In early 1990s the Xerox team working on new product development for
“all-in-one” machine took a 2 day group outing
 On the last day, one half of the group was hiking past a waste dump and
decided to see what was there…They found a Xerox copier
“It was hard to explain what happened, but after 2 days in the
pristine wilderness, the waste of it all became clear”
What Happened Next:
 The engineers began calculating all the other machines in landfills, and
during a discussion they decided to “stop“ - Zero to Landfill was born
 6 years later the new product line was launched – 93% remanufacturable
and 97% recyclable
 800 managers, engineers, and technicians worked on the project
 Manufactured waste free plant – no remaining scrap, packaging, or plastic.

11. Some Firms will see new opportunity
 Interface Flooring
 Haworth
 Nike
Going the Long Way
Some Firms will start with a single product
 Puma
 HP
 Esquel
Low Hanging Fruit
Some Firms will be sustainable from day 1
 Burt’s Bees
 Bambu Home
 Shokay
Starting from Scratch
Others Will Wait
Changing Models

12. Keys to Systemic Change
Vision
CapacityScale
Awareness
Scale: Creating a system base that grows across the organization
and core processes
• Organizational funding, programs, and people are stabilized at current level
• Processes are in place to improve efficiency and protect against unexpected shocks
Awareness: Understanding the problem and recognizing one’s role
• Building management understanding of issues, risks, and opportunities
• Identifying a single product/ process as a pilot program
Vision: Developing focus and Staying on Track
• What is goal that will be accomplished?
• What will it take to accomplish goals?
• What are the short term/ long term steps to achieving those goals
Capacity: Creating an organization / product / process
that is bigger than one person, process or business unit
• Investing in a process’s need for R&D, equipment, and people
• Working with externals (suppliers and customers) to manage variables and
expectations

13. “In the end, environmental, social and economic sustainability cannot be
separated. A sustainable planet must include a sustainable human
civilization – resilient human systems that respect the complicated
relationships among poverty, human rights, economic development,
environmental health, and human success”
- Institute for the Future, 2008
Richard Brubaker, Founder
rich@collectiveresponsibility.org
www. collectiveresponsibility.org
@chinacsr
@greenerchina