In an interview Rudiger Eberhard, Chief Procurement Officer, Evonik and President of Together for Sustainability (TfS) with Chemical Today magazine talks about the initiative.
By Debarati Das
About TfS journey:
The aim of Together for Sustainability is to drive and foster resilience, efficiency, and sustainability of global supply chains in the chemical industry. We are currently 19 pharmaceutical and chemical companies supporting sustainability. It was only 5 years back when several CPOs questioned on how they could be more efficient in ensuring the various aspects of responsible care, governmental and ethical regulations, labour and human rights, etc.
We then analysed the code of conducts of different companies and this initiative was born based on our own questionnaire. Since then, we have assessed more than 5500 companies globally which are a tremendous success of this initiative. This assessment and audit can be jointly used by the members of this initiative.
It will also be advantageous to the supplies as they don’t have to go through any other assessments on sustainability as one questionnaire will be defined whether they are on the same principals. In the reassessments that happened over the few years, we have seen a huge improvement in over 2/3rd of the companies in the overall development of sustainability.
Future measures of TfS to take sustainability to the next level:
With this initiative, we are trying to have sustainable supply chains build upon strong partnerships and commitment of its participants to protect the environment and the safety and health of workers, provide fair working conditions, contribute positively to the livelihoods of workers and communities, and operate in full compliance with applicable laws.
We have already covered Europe and many parts of US and we are definitely trying to take it to the other parts of the world. Going forward, we are trying to come up with efficient measures in the various challenges that we are currently facing by working together with our supply chain. We also plan to have close collaborations with various chemical associations to take this initiative even deeper into the system. We are closely working together and pursuing common objectives: improving sustainability practices and building resiliency in the supply chains of the chemical industry. This is the basis for our success.”
TfS is steadily growing. In 2015, we have managed to forward the global implementation of our assessment and audit programs. As one result, the first US American companies have joined the initiative. In 2016, the international implementation will again be our focus; driven in part by a supplier conference in India in September.
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