Grateful to have been part of the sustainability panel at ChemEdge this week, "Building Sustainability into Daily Operations."
On the ChemEdge sustainability panel, my angle was that sustainability is a data problem. Distributors already track freight lanes, order size, packaging and returns, and the number changes how people work once it sits next to margin on the weekly report.
My angle: sustainability is a data problem.
A customer asks for the carbon footprint on one shipment. The answer lives in the ERP, the carrier invoice, a supplier PDF, and somebody’s spreadsheet. Three weeks later you have a number that everyone questions.
What I enjoyed most was hearing how much everyone already tracks. Freight lanes. Order size. Drum versus tote versus bulk. Returns. Warehouse utilization. Miles per pound shipped. Operations data with a different name on it. Distributors love data!
A number in an annual report doesn’t change how anyone works. The same number next to margin on the weekly report does.
Thank you to Nadya Avanesova and Alliance for Chemical Distribution (ACD) for the invitation, to my fellow panelists: John Foshee and Rachel Lerner for an intriguing discussion, and to everyone attended in the audience. This industry is full of people who want to get this right, and it shows.