The most important person in sustainability doesn’t work in sustainability

This article is sponsored by The Sustainability Consortium.

The impacts on sustainability are everywhere. And yet, it’s rare that a single person is responsible for a sustainability issue or its resolution. Science tells us that food and consumer goods are essential. They are responsible for 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, two-thirds of tropical deforestation, 80 percent of global water use, and three-quarters of forced and child labor. . This means that creating a sustainable future is really about creating a global revolution in sustainable consumption.

People with the title “sustainability” work tirelessly on sustainable strategies. But there is an extremely important role in the supply chain that doesn’t necessarily work in sustainability: the buyer, the person who makes the decisions about what ends up on store shelves (whether it is physical or online retail space).

Why are buyers so important? Is it about shaping consumer purchases? Yes, but that’s not the whole story. I think people shouldn’t have to choose between products they can afford and products that are good for them, their families, their communities and the planet.

We know that a growing number of buyers are voting with their credit cards, favoring brands that share their values. And new initiatives like Amazon’s Climate Pledge Friendly program allow buyers to prioritize products with leading sustainability certifications like GreenSeal and The Carbon Trust’s Reducing CO2 label.

And yet, for most consumers and for many product categories, this change will not come quickly enough. We need sustainability “built in” to everything buyers buy.

So who is responsible for providing this?

The truth is, it depends on everyone who works in these value chains. From consumer brands and manufacturers to traders, farmers, miners and beyond. We need everyone to step up to understand their impacts, set science-based goals, and mobilize their businesses and supply chains to achieve them. This is a colossal undertaking that affects a large part of the entire world economy.

It can seem a bit overwhelming – like spinning an oil tanker with a kayak paddle. So how do you get things done faster and how do you shift the balance of incentives so that the entire value chain does more?

At Consortium for Sustainability (TSC), we have collaborated with the best sustainability science to develop maps of each value chain in food and consumer products, then identified the most important social and environmental hotspots, wherever. ‘they find themselves. The complexity and diversity are enormous. From apples to laptops, T-shirts to shampoo, car batteries to chips.

And yet each detailed map has the same basic shape – an hourglass. There is great diversity and great diversity in the production, and this is also reflected in the enormous diversity in the use of the products. But the map still narrows in the center. And that’s where the most important person when it comes to sustainability is. They do not work in sustainable development and some of them do not even see that it is still part of their role. But they have the greatest ability to ensure anyone’s durability. I am of course talking about the retail buyer.

These people, who work in retail purchasing, do more than anyone to shape how products are made and what we buy. They decide which products get the most storage space, which are promoted the most actively, and which will be taken off the list for the following season. Historically and today, these people are motivated by a handful of key parameters: sales volume; margin; storage rates; Return. But what about adding durability to this mix?

The most progressive retailers – like Walmart, Target, Kroger, Walgreens – already provide their buyers with data and information on the sustainability performance of their products and suppliers. Some retailers are even experimenting with new incentives for these shoppers to bring more sustainable products to the shelves. At TSC, our THESIS Index program gives retail buyers the sustainability information they need to make informed choices about the suppliers they work with and the products they buy. It grew rapidly; it is used by more than 1,500 of the largest food and consumer goods companies covering products worth approximately $ 1 trillion in annual retail sales. Most importantly, we see a 5-10% improvement in sustainability performance year over year.

So what do buyers need to be successful? Three things:

They are a data-driven group: they need sustainable development data and information that is relevant and actionable. They don’t buy entire businesses, they buy products. So they need data on the products they buy that spans the entire value chain and the entire product life cycle. And that data should help better understand how things stack up, which products have improved, and which vendors need help or a boost to get started.

We all believe that sustainability is of the utmost importance. But if “important” equates to “separate,” then sustainability is recorded to be forever siled, where it is not part of day-to-day operations. Sustainability data and information must coexist with other business metrics managed by buyers, and therefore must be integrated into the software and tools that these professionals use on a daily basis.

Last but not least, commercial buyers need help. They cannot do it alone. They need a management team that has put sustainability at the heart of business strategy. They need a management structure that recognizes them for the progress they are making. And they need partners in product design, marketing, operations and, of course, sustainability to make things happen.

So, the next time you meet a buyer, please say “thank you” to them for all they do today, and all they can do to unlock the sustainable products and sustainable purchasing revolution that we are doing. have to see.