We hear allot about supply chain management within our industry, and until recently mainly in the context of improving value, relationships, reducing costs, waste and all the nice performance improvement stuuf.

What if we add reducing the carbon or ecological footprint into the supply chain management debate.

An excellent paper from the Centre for Integrated Sustainability Analysis – Unravelling the Impacts of Supply Chains – A new Triple Bottom Line accounting approach looks at just this issue.

It also raises the fundamental question on calculating carbon footprints – we are concerned in the main, at the moment, with direct or primary emissions – ie those we, or an organisation are directly responsible for,  How about those (secondary) emissions upstream, through the supply chain activities, raw material production etc, which in the context of a construction footprint surely must be taken into account.
We have seen this exercise start and stop within other sectors. for example the large supermarket organisation – but will it only be a matter of time before a wider view on the construction carbon emissions and contribution is expected within the built environment?