Keeping Your Sustainability and Green Goals in Focus

  • Keeping Your Sustainability and Green Goals in Focus

     

    There has been significant disruptions over the past two weeks as a result of the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. The only things that seem certain are inflation and continued problems with sourcing materials. This doesn’t mean you have to scrap your sustainability and environmental goals. You just need to take a step back and evaluate the landscape.

    So many companies have committed to reduce emissions and go green, which is a great thing, its pointing to short supply of certain materials.Even before the events of the past two weeks, projections stated that there would be global shortages of recycled aluminum and recycled plastics. Also, demand for green steel is projected to outstrip supply by 2030.

    Now is the time to carefully plan to build capabilities and relationships with suppliers, to ensure you can meet your goals. Consumers are watching – there is an increased demand for low emissions products. And they’re willing to pay a bit more for those products. So while it may be tempting to put your environmental goals on the back burner – a long term view is needed. If done in line with consumer demand, it could increase profit margins on certain items.

    Try to lock in pricing on your environmentally friendly supplies, to avoid rising price premiums. The longer you wait to come up with a plan, the more you will end up paying. It will take ingenuity, collaboration across supply chains and such.

    Some things you can focus on:

    Work on developing deeper insight into the green market to reduce uncertainty.

    Work on tactics that lend themselves to a long term approach.

    Manage your supply chain to reduce emissions.

    Look at all your input costs and see where you can adjust to save or redeploy that savings to environmentally friendly solutions.

    Don’t try to do it all at once. Even incremental changes make a difference and show you’re going in the right direction.

    All that being said, stay confident in your company’s environmental and sustainability goals. By taking the lead and staying the course, you’ll be well positioned in the future instead of trying to catch up.

    SOURCE FOR ARTICLE: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/its-not-easy-buying-green-how-to-win-at-sustainable-sourcing