I’m busy planning the next meeting of the Corporate Sustainability Mastermind Group on Friday. The topic is one we keep coming back to – making Supply Chains sustainable. This is no surprise as for most organisations, the bulk of their eco-footprint lies in the supply chain along with a myriad of potential hidden landmines which could go off at any moment.

When I was drafting my book, Building A Sustainable Supply Chain, I soon realised that to transform your supply chain, you had to look internally first. Your supply chain’s impact is largely dictated by issues such as your business model, your product/service design and your processes, rather than those of your suppliers. If your product requires a toxic material, then your suppliers can hardly help but supply you with that material and all the myriad impacts and risks of producing it. Design out the material and those impacts and risks disappear.

So this is why the template I’m using to structure the discussion (see above) splits actions into internal and external, because you need to get both right. Despite the arrows, we’ll actually be working from right to left – from the ideal future back to today in a mini-backcasting exercise. But that’s a story for another day…