Maturity and Challenges of Water Sustainability across the Supply Chain
Abstract
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.
Type
Master's projectSubject
Water sustainabilitySupply chain
Value chain
Corporate sustainability
Food and beverage industry
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/3680Citation
Spear, Emily (2011). Maturity and Challenges of Water Sustainability across the Supply Chain. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/3680.Collections
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