Browsing by Subject "Corporate sustainability"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
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    Assessing Climate Change Vulnerabilities Across Lockheed Martin United States Facilities and Selected Segments of the C-130 Supply Chain
    (2016-04-28) Aneja, Saurabh; Havens, Amy; Hobbs, Marisa; Ramer, Johannah
    Risks and impacts associated with climate change can adversely affect companies’ profitability by leading to facility closures, higher operating costs, and supply chain disruptions. Lockheed Martin Corporation, a leading global aerospace and defense company, aims to quantify and prioritize these risks across its facilities and supply chain. Our project explores six climate change-related risks—drought, flood, sea level rise, temperature, water stress, and wildfire—across nine U.S. geographic regions where Lockheed Martin may operate. For each risk, we analyzed historical data and climate projections to determine regional vulnerability scores for current, short-term, and long-term timeframes. We also developed a data visualization tool that allows for the comparison of vulnerability scores across regions. Based on these vulnerability scores, we identified the key risks and geographic regions for Lockheed Martin to prioritize for further risk assessment.
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    Defining Green: Lessons Learned from Eco-labelling in the Consumer Goods Industry
    (2010-04-22T05:23:24Z) Michalko, Alexandra
    In recent years, companies have been under increasing pressure to communicate their sustainability performance to interested stakeholders. Reliable metrics and third-party validation in particular play an important role in the effort to quantify a company’s impact on the environments and communities in which it operates. This increasing focus on corporate environmental and social performance has led to a proliferation of ecolabels, but there are currently no comprehensive efforts to assess best practices in labeling. I conducted research to understand the current landscape of consumer goods ecolabels by creating a framework of success across the dimensions of market and field, analyzing survey data, and performing case studies. I discussed emerging best practices and lessons learned and made recommendations for how we can better design labels in the future. I conclude by identifying the implications of my research findings for ecolabels design and highlighting areas requiring further research.
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    DIVING INTO A FAMILY COMPANY’S FIRST SUSTAINABILITY REPORT
    (2017-12-11) Charania, Haseena
    FPI, a family-run and business-to-business packaging company based in the southern United States, is planning to produce its first corporate sustainability report. Several steps are involved in creating a sustainability report, starting with a materiality assessment to determine which topics should be benchmarked, monitored, and included in the report. The goal of the assessment is to incorporate perspectives from both internal and external stakeholders of the organization to create a materiality matrix that maps the importance of various topics in a visual, user-friendly, and quantitative manner. This ensures that the topics that are included in the sustainability report are in fact significant, or material, to the organization’s internal and external stakeholders. The materiality assessment is followed by interviews with leadership to gather qualitative data on near-term sustainability priorities; this step was initiated with interview from five leaders in separate divisions within the company. Based on the survey, these are the top ten suggested priority topics ranked in order of importance: Waste, Workplace Culture, Consumer Health and Safety, Local Communities, Water, Agriculture/Biodiversity, Climate Change, Occupational Health and Safety, Energy, and Supply Chain. This work formalizes FPI’s concern for the environment and interest in improving its sustainable business practices.
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    Environmental Footprint Strategy for Philadelphia Macaroni Company
    (2023-04-28) Chan, Meilin; Jani, Chayan; Weinberg, Julia; Qiu, Ina
    To reach net zero goals, global food industry leaders are beginning to request that their suppliers take data-driven actions to reduce their environmental footprint. This project aims to develop a forward-thinking sustainability strategy which can position Philadelphia Macaroni Company (PMC) as a key sustainable supplier. We determined future requirements for food industry suppliers through industry benchmarking, informational interviews, and an assessment of PMC’s carbon accounting tool. The project focuses on four key metrics material to PMC: greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable agriculture, waste, and water. Our findings indicate that while leading companies have set ambitious sustainability linked supply chain goals, they are not yet actively engaging suppliers in these goals. We recommend a strategy that focuses on three scenarios (meets minimum expectation, adds value and future proofing) to prepare them for the future alignment with industry and meet key customer expectations.
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    Evaluating NGO-Corporate Partnership Effectiveness: A Case Study of the Environmental Defense Fund
    (2020-04-23) Nichols-Vinueza, Alexander
    Corporations face growing pressure from stakeholders and customers to demonstrate the steps they’re taking to positively impact the environment. To help firms confront new environmental challenges, environmental NGOs in particular have been called upon as outside experts to ensure corporate environmental initiatives are both credible and effective. Yet there is still limited research on the specific activities within these partnerships that NGOs should prioritize to maximize potential environmental gains. This report reviews the latest research on corporate voluntary environmental initiatives and surveys a leading environmental NGO (the Environmental Defense Fund) on its approach to partnering with the private sector. The results suggest that to improve the environmental performance of these partnerships, NGOs should prioritize: 1) partnering with high-profile companies to set ambitious, science-based sustainability targets that can sway entire industries; 2) collaborating with them to openly advocate for new federal environmental policy; 3) providing reporting oversight alongside key stakeholders such as investors and more activist NGOs to drive greater accountability; and 4) linking corporate environmental efforts to new commercial opportunities that boost the profitability and scalability of their results. These findings, while not exhaustive, offer a framework for further research and validate several best practices for the wider environmental NGO community to consider in its future work with the private-sector.
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    Implementation Effectiveness of Corporate Environmental Policies & Strategies
    (2008-08-28T00:51:14Z) Weikel, Marielle Canter
    Conservation International (CI) has for many years recognized both the impact private sector development has on global biodiversity and the opportunity companies present to achieving biodiversity conservation results if their resources are properly harnessed. As a result, CI has long engaged with numerous companies to support their development and implementation of environmental best practices, including policies and strategies. Several years into this collaborative approach, little effort has been placed on a formal evaluation of how effectively these policies and strategies are being implemented, and what positive, measurable impact, if any, this has had on achieving biodiversity conservation results. Therefore, this research aims to evaluate a select number of companies in the mining sector with whom CI has worked for several years to determine how effective their environmental policy and strategy implementation has been, and identify any linkages to achieving biodiversity conservation results. Research methods included a review of scholarly literature, comparative company research of four mining companies (Alcoa, BHP Billiton, Newmont, and Rio Tinto), and structured interviews of company and CI representatives. While research concluded that it is too soon to evaluate if CI’s partnerships have lead to biodiversity conservation outcomes, they do appear to have contributed to factors that may enable achievement of outcomes in the longer term. Additionally, while companies have identified performance goals and targets as important components of environmental policies and successful implementation, they have not consistently set them for important environmental issues such as biodiversity, water, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Government capacity was also an issue raised as key to corporate environmental performance. Finally, a lack of existing scholarly work on corporate environmental performance and implementation of environmental policies was identified. This paper presents several recommendations developed to address these key findings.
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    Maturity and Challenges of Water Sustainability across the Supply Chain
    (2011-04-29) Spear, Emily
    Corporate engagement in water sustainability from a supply chain perspective is limited but growing, as a clear business case is manifesting. Increasingly, water is becoming a serious risk for companies with global operations, since water stress and water access problems are growing. To date, companies have cited water as a sustainability priority but often fall short of reporting sufficient data and progress on goals. However, the food and beverage industry has been active in this space, because water is an integral part of their business and touches most aspects of the supply chain. This project attempts to map the current landscape where companies are engaging in water sustainability across their supply chains and to identify various types of engagement, in order to draw out leading practices that will help companies better understand ways of advancing their level of engagement. Three companies were chosen for analysis – Nestlé Waters North America, PepsiCo, Inc., and The Coca-Cola Company – as they met the criteria of being engaged for two or more years, were within the food and beverage industry, and were willing to be interviewed. I created my own Sustainable Value Chain Collaboration Index to map out the companies’ maturity levels based on my own research and corporate interviews. The Index encompasses four key indicators (“Corporate,” “Internal Practices & Policies,” “Value Chain Collaboration,” and “External Stakeholder Collaboration”) with five stages of collaboration. The results from the Index indicate that there are some leading practices upstream with suppliers but still no standardization for best practices (i.e., none reached stage 5) and downstream engagement with customers is very limited. In addition, no company has incentives and accountability for desired behavior for their suppliers when looking at “Value Chain Collaboration.” I then conclude with some recommendations on ways companies can employ the Index and improve their level of collaboration with the value chain.
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    Supply Chain ESG Compliance Strategy at Aptar
    (2021-04-25) Ding, Kelly; Gamber, Angela; Jurcak, James; Shook, Adrienne
    AptarGroup (Aptar) is a global leader in packaging manufacturing with a robust environmental and social governance (ESG) program. Aptar recently began a partnership with EcoVadis, a market leader in environmental and social supply chain reporting but did not previously have procedures in place to engage with suppliers or ensure supply chain transparency. The objective of this Master’s Project was to create a comprehensive supply chain compliance roadmap to provide guidance on bringing suppliers on to the EcoVadis platform, verify responses, and work with suppliers who have ESG reporting structures that are independent of EcoVadis. The roadmap outlines how compliance will be managed by Aptar through audits, evaluation of the risk level of suppliers who do not respond to EcoVadis surveys, and proactive networking programs to foster engagement and collaboration across their value chain. Recommendations in this report were informed by market research on supply chain management best practices within and outside of the packaging industry, and a literature review. They include: 1) recommendations for supplier Engagement, 2) a decision tree for risk assessment and to determine an appropriate audit schedule for all suppliers, 3) future suggestions for supply chain collaboration, and 4) a phased roll-out strategy to implement these recommendations.
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    Sustainability Engagement and Incentivization for Employees at Oatly North America
    (2023-04-26) Block-Funkhouser, Devon; Bowness, Mollie; Gordon, Rachel; Zou, Danlei
    Oatly, the world’s first and largest oat milk company, has a sustainability strategy focused on developing a food system that is better for people and the planet. This project’s objective is to deliver recommended strategies for Oatly that will engage and incentivize employees on their sustainability goals. A three-part process, this project 1) assesses Oatly’s current sustainability engagement strategies, 2) conducts a landscape analysis of strategies implemented by companies across various sectors, and 3) analyzes these findings to recommend strategies best aligned with Oatly’s culture and sustainability goals. These final recommended strategies are 1) develop a sustainability education and training program, 2) create a system that formalizes each employee’s role within Oatly’s sustainability goals, 3) establish a sustainability advisory board, 4) develop sustainability product guidelines, 5) conduct sustainability hackathons, and 6) implement sustainability challenges within plant operations.
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    Sustainability Planning for Baxter International Inc.: Climate Change Policies in the UK
    (2014-04-23) Fish, Jeffrey S; Kurkul, Kevin L
    Large, multinational companies are facing substantial costs and risks due to climate change-related government policies. While corporate sustainability efforts help reduce such costs and even create business opportunities, long-term policy impacts are rarely evaluated and internalized. This study quantifies future policy cost possibilities in three scenarios and provides modeling tools to assist in long-term corporate planning. Developed for Baxter International, a global medical products company, the analysis and model center on manufacturing facilities in the United Kingdom. The model projects energy costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy project viability for Baxter plants through 2030 using the developed scenarios and wholesale energy price sensitivity. Strategies to integrate long-term policy planning in other business aspects and markets are discussed. Together, these tools offer corporate decision makers approaches to interpret and capitalize on future climate change policies.
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    Unleashing Strategy for Sustainability
    (2020-04-22) Hodges, Joseph
    The disciplines of corporate strategy and corporate sustainability share many similarities, and the tools of each can be used to enhance the objectives of the other. Both involve aligning multiple stakeholders, making difficult trade-offs, analyzing metrics, and generating long-term value creation. However, traditional corporate strategy emphasizes competitive differentiation, while sustainability calls for collaboration and coordination. This project explored ways for strategy methodologies to better incorporate sustainability principles to achieve better outcomes for a firm and the natural environment. The first phase of the project narrowed down a wide range of possible tools to three frameworks that work best for generating long-term and sustainable value creation. The second phase then looked at applications of these three methodologies within “stronger” definitions of sustainability, i.e. more focused on ecological measures and outcomes. Ultimately, strategists and sustainability practitioners have similar goals, and this project shows how both can integrate the other field into their work to generate long-term value for society and the planet.