Harnessing Procurement To Tackle Climate Change

As experts in procurement and open data, we are pleased to see the recent announcement that global confectionery giant Mars is harnessing its procurement power to tackle climate change.

Joining forces with Guidehouse, a sustainability consultancy, Mars has developed a coalition of suppliers to use the procurement process to drive change.

The new coalition called the Supplier Leadership on Climate transition (Supplier LoCT), will include other major brands such as PepsiCo and McCormick, and will drive an industry-wide programme to provide suppliers with the tools and knowledge to calculate their GHG footprint, and set their own emissions targets.

While Mars has cut its direct emissions and will hit its 2025 reduction target early, it now plans to tackle the education of carbon emissions right through its supply chain, where 94 % of its emissions derive. Mars already has more than 50 of its major suppliers involved in the programme through its #PledgeforPlanet initiative that began in 2019, and it now plans to engage all of its 200 largest suppliers.

Kevin Rabinovitch, Mars VP Global Sustainability said, “It’s all about procurement, right? If sustainability is the what, procurement is the how. From a money point of view, our procurement dollars are much larger than any other expenditure by the company. To the extent that we can use those to reward the right behaviours and shift things, that’s a powerful lever.”

Undoubtedly, the covid recovery plans across the globe provide the perfect opportunity for businesses and governments to make step changes in their procurement processes, including building transparency requirements for suppliers that improve outcomes for citizens and societies.

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