Managing our supply chain
We want our suppliers to have the same level of climate ambition as we do. Back in 2017, we set a target for 80% of our key suppliers to have greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets by 2022. We haven’t yet met this target - but more than two-thirds of our suppliers have now set targets so we have made strong progress. Here’s our journey, the challenges we faced, the successes we had, and what else we’re doing to support and engage our supply chain around ESG.
Setting the scene
We know that we can have a significant impact through influencing our supply chain, which in turn can create a broader positive ripple effect in the market. In 2017, we set a target for 80% of our key suppliers to have GHG emissions reductions targets by 2022, helping manage our scope 3 emissions which account for 90% of our carbon footprint.
To date, 68% of suppliers have these targets. We didn’t quite meet our goal, but we’re proud of the progress we’ve made to engage and support our supply chain.
How we helped
We’ve been engaging and supporting our suppliers to work towards improving our collective sustainability performance, calling on data from our annual supplier survey and strengthening our requirements throughout the procurement cycle.
Awareness raising and climate education are central to our approach. That’s why we hold an annual sustainability supplier forum. This year’s focussed on the ‘how’ of net zero, shifting from the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of previous years, looking at the role of technology and hearing from some PwC Net Zero Future50 innovators.
While 68% of our suppliers have set GHG emissions targets, and 58% have reported a reduction, some of our smaller suppliers are just starting their journey. This year, we piloted a new programme, the Net Zero Springboard, to help kick-start our suppliers’ decarbonisation plans, and eventually set a Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) approved reduction target. This programme is designed to target the two main barriers identified by our suppliers - capability and capacity - through net zero training, access to a carbon footprinting tool and workshops to address their specific challenges.
As well as reducing the carbon emissions from our supply chain, we’re using our spend to do good by purchasing more from social enterprises as part of the Buy Social Corporate Commitment.
“We know the impact we can have through encouraging and supporting our suppliers to improve their impacts, and have found our suppliers are really keen to work with us to do just that. Be it our caterers purchasing more from social enterprises, our major suppliers finding out more about how technology can help manage their carbon emissions or our smaller suppliers starting their journey to net zero with us - we are working collectively to make a positive difference.”
Making a difference
We may have fallen short of our target, but 68% of our core suppliers represents an estimated 41,000 tCO2e so we know we're driving a positive impact through our supply chain.
We progressed well with our other five year supply chain targets, as detailed in our non-financial scorecard:
81% of our suppliers have a Human rights Policy, against our target of 80%
77% of key suppliers have included sustainability in their commercial arrangements, just shy of our target of 80%.
We met our target to spend £10m with social enterprises since 2016.
And we were recognised for our modern slavery work by being shortlisted at this year’s Thomson Reuters Foundation Stop Slavery Award for our crucial work helping end exploitation in our supply chain and operations.
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