Responsible sourcing

A comprehensive review of the environmental and social impacts of a company’s activities needs to include upstream issues within the supply chain. This is often where the most challenging environmental and social issues are found and those which may pose the greatest risk to a company’s reputation.

Supplies from developing countries, where regulatory standards on employment and environmental protection are weak, may be especially high risk and raise very sensitive issues such as:

• child labour
• poor health and safety conditions
• other forms of worker exploitation such as bonded labour
• damage to natural resources such as forests

Taking action to reduce environmental and social impacts up the supply chain is something that most companies find particularly difficult, because of the lack of direct management control.

Fairport (International) can draw on almost 20 years experience of managing supply chain issues and we have been closely involved with B&Q’s (the largest DIY retailer in Europe) highly regarded supplier environmental and social programme since its inception.

See the Clients page for examples of our supply chain projects.