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Sustainable Supply Chains

A sustainable supply chain is one that considers environmental and social impacts across its entire value chain to ensure the protection of people and the environment. Presently, businesses experience the largest volume of emissions within their Scope 3 and are proactively trying to calculate and respond to this. But negative social impacts in a value chain can go unaccounted for due to a lack of traceability and transparency.

The shift to jointly assess the environment and social risks is occurring due to the new EU legislation such as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the EU Green Claims Directive. These now require companies to be able to demonstrate sufficient evidence to support any sustainability claim across both social and environment.

BITCI support members to create more sustainable supply chains through

Using our Business Working Responsibly Mark as a framework, support member companies to map their supply chains, increase due diligence and transparency. Identify potential risks and provide guidance to mitigate.
Provide feedback on policies and procedures that are in place and identify any gaps.
Provide support with stakeholder engagement such as facilitate supplier engagement meetings and events or support internal working groups or committees.
Provide training for employees and or other stakeholders on human rights, modern slavery or climate action.

Many of our members have a complex value chain that includes many SMEs and while we do not offer a direct service for SMEs, we recognise that we can support SMEs indirectly through our members. In 2024 we are excited to trial a new project All-Ireland Climate Action Pilot Programme for SMEs and we look forward to sharing the learnings from this pilot.