Sustainable IT | Ted Samson | InfoWorld | Dell, HP join effort to measure supply chains' carbon output | January 17, 2008 03:54 PM

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Dell, HP join effort to measure supply chains' carbon output

January 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Dell, HP join effort to measure supply chains' carbon output

Feeling increasing pressure, both internally from high-level execs and externally from customers, investors, and politicians, companies are taking the size of their carbon footprints quite seriously.

Yet more companies are determining that their own daily operations aren't the sole contributors to their carbon emissions. Rather, they're factoring in the emissions produced by the vendors down their supply chains. No one wants to be a greenhouse gas spewer by association, so to speak.

Exemplifying this trend is a recent announcement from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a collaboration of over 315 institutional investors managing more than $41 trillion in assets. CDP is working with 11 corporate giants -- including IT heavyweights HP and Dell -- to develop a standard method to gather carbon-emissions information from suppliers.

According to CDP, developing a standard means for suppliers to deliver carbon-emissions information "will vastly decrease the burden on [those] suppliers who might otherwise receive several separate requests for similar information."

Indeed, suppliers have already been facing increased scrutiny for customers further up the supply chain, such as HP, IBM, and Wal-Mart, to demonstrate their environmental and social stewardship.

"The Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration is a key step towards a unified business approach to climate change," said CDP CEO Paul Dickinson in a written statement. "By bringing together the purchasing authority of some of the largest companies in the world, CDP will encourage suppliers to measure and manage their greenhouse gas emissions. This will enable large companies to work towards managing their total carbon footprint, as the first step to reducing the total carbon footprint is to measure its size."

A pilot of the project is now under way. Each participating member of the Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration has selected as many as 50 suppliers to respond to the CDP pilot information request in the first quarter of this year. From there, the project will be rolled out in May.

In addition to Dell and HP, other companies participating in the Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration include: Cadbury Schweppes, Imperial Tobacco, L'Oreal, Nestle, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, Tesco, and Unilever.

More information about CDP's Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration is available on the CDP Web site.

Ted Samson is a senior analyst at InfoWorld and author of the Sustainable IT blog. Subscribe to his free weekly Green Tech newsletter.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 17, 2008 03:54 PM

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