RS Group Q&A: Decarbonising the Supply Chain
Scope 3 generally represents a company’s largest area of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but it can often be overlooked.
A recent report from EY found that more than 90% of an organisation's greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to supply chains, and a report from Accenture found that supply chains account for around 60% of global carbon emissions.
Despite this, only half of all CEOs view supply chain responsibility as integral to their sustainability strategy.
Maximising sustainability is beneficial for both profits and the planet – DP World reports 82% of industry professionals say embracing sustainability has improved their organisation's financial performance.
RS Group, a leading distributor of industrial and electrical products, is one of the companies at the forefront of this area.
Carolyn Park, Vice President of Group Supply Chain at RS Group, is responsible for the supply chain across the group. She focusses on optimising cost, service and sustainability and aims to reduce the group’s carbon emissions in both transport and packaging.
Andrea Barrett, VP of Social Responsibility and Sustainability at RS Group, oversees the group’s ESG goals through strategising for its 2030 action plan, setting sustainability goals and implementing new initiatives.
Carolyn and Andrea speak to Sustainability Magazine about the steps RS Group is taking to ensure its supply chains are ready for a more sustainable future.
RS recently published its annual ESG report. Could you tell us more about the findings and explain what a Better World product means?
“Every year we publish our annual ESG or sustainability report, which provides a much fuller picture of everything we've achieved across our action plan. And it's much more directed to a wider stakeholder audience rather than just our shareholders," explains Andrea.
"We're always thinking about how we can, as a global provider of products and a distributor of products, offer the kind of cleanest and greenest distribution service that we can to our customers.
"We've reduced emissions by 57%, so well on our way to achieving that 75% reduction. And then we've also set science-based targets around our logistics emissions, which is the area that Carolyn leads.
"We need to inspire and influence suppliers and offer them that commercial opportunity through things like marketing of the products or boosted products so that they can see that actually investing in these sustainability improvements has a commercial return as well as a return for the environment.”
What do you think the future of packaging looks like for RS and the wider industry?
"What's really important to us is the reuse of materials. We've introduced totes and pallets so that when we move around our network between the UK and into Europe we now have replaced tonnes and tonnes of cardboard that used to make those journeys," says Carolyn.
"We are working with our suppliers, doing testing with them so that we co-create what that future looks like. No one individual is going to make this happen. We have to collaborate with packaging suppliers and we have to collaborate with customers to get their ideas as well.”
Why is tackling Scope 3 emissions so important and how can companies make progress on this?
"Scope 3 emissions are more than 90% of a company's total carbon footprint," Andrea explains.
"It's incumbent on the businesses that are really driving the agenda, it's on the big businesses to really lead the way.
"You’ve got to start with measuring it because you can’t tackle what you can’t see and what you can’t measure. Then, similarly, you’ve got other big categories; purchase goods and services, products in use.
"Having KPIs that are embedded in the business for sustainability is key – every one of those KPIs is embedded somewhere in the business.
“Sustainability is a key metric at the forefront of everything that we do.”
How can companies integrate their ESG goals with supply chain optimisation – does AI and digitalisation have a role to play?
Andrea says: "The way to make sustainability a standard business activity will be to use the modern practices in data around AI and machine learning in the future.”
AI is an efficient way to analyse data, making it the perfect tool to measure carbon emissions across supply chains.
Using IoT, companies can collect and automatically sync data from different parts of their operations to software to be combined and analysed.
This information can then be reported to increase supply chain visibility, making it easier to address.
You often talk about collaboration between competitors and across industries as the way forward to achieve sustainability goals - could you explain how you think that might work on a practical level?
"The only way for me we can tackle this end to end is absolutely through collaboration," says Andrea.
"It’s about building relationships to learn from those that are better developed, but also pass that knowledge on to others.”
"The future is actual enablement. How do you bring your supply chain together and make it easy for them to take action?"
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