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No chain is stronger than its weakest link, nor is the supply chain of the companies. Many import businesses has quite few employees at home, but many more abroad - in their own production facilities or by their suppliers. And mostly the problems with environment or social responsibility are rooted at the suppliers or sub-suppliers.

Some of the environmental problems are due to missing knowledge of adequate technology - and here you may possible help your suppliers abroad to avoid some of the environmental problems, that we caused in our own country in the sixties and seventies!

If your want your goods to be produced in an environmental and social responsible way you need to be specific about this in your demands to the suppliers. And you will have to build up some systems and procedures to secure current fulfilment of your demands.

Key words are traceability, knowledge of raw materials, mapping of production aspects, control visits and compliance commitment letters, documentation and second part audits or even a certification of the suppliers. And you should set up criteria for screening and selection of new suppliers.

Supply chain management can be conducted by different methods, depending on what level of control and security you need. As an absolute minimum your company should create a Code of Conduct and request the suppliers to sign it. But this does not secure that your demands are met by the suppliers. To reach a higher level of security frequent internal audits must be conducted to control that your suppliers complies with your demands on environment and social responsibility.

When you reach - or decide to reach - a level where you think your suppliers are on compliance, you might go for a SA8000- and/or ISO 14001 -certification. A certification will document that you comply with the standard through and external and independent control. 

Raw materials are often extracted in developing countries where occupational health and safety and environmental aspects are not sufficient seen by a European consumer perspective.
If you want to be sure that your products are manufactured in a social and environmental responsible way, you need to control all raw materials used for the final products.

Your supplier will normally be able to document the origin and composition of most of the used raw materials. But often it can be more or less impossible to get a clear and documented picture of the origin of all the materials as is the case with e.g. granite from India and China, some fish products etc.
Mostly your suppliers knows who produced the individual order, even they may not have a written documentation. In such cases the task is to help the supplier to build up a system for documentation and traceability of all the materials used in the manufacturing of your products.

Another part of working with supply chain management is about influencing your suppliers to purchase raw materials from sub-suppliers, that are manufacturing their materials social and environmental responsible. If you set up clear demands of what you expect from the raw materials and their manufacturing, you will make the job easier for your suppliers. These demands could include no use pesticides or antibiotics for growing of crops or breeding of fish/animals, demands on use or proper personal protective equipment or a decent wage for the workers employed by the sub-suppliers.

You should be able to document that imported goods from your suppliers are manufactured social and environmental responsible.

The first step will be to conduct a mapping of production aspects and processes at your major suppliers. This mapping must indicate if the production creates environmental problems or if there are any problems with the working conditions or safety during the production.

Afterwards you can set up a plan for improvement based on the mapping, and discuss this with your suppliers. Hopefully will it be possible to make an agreement on the solutions of different issues raised as a result of the mapping, and also to make a reasonable time-frame for the necessary improvements.

To secure frequent documentation of the production at your suppliers, you should set up an adequate management system containing reports from your suppliers and the necessary procedures for this. Ethical Trade Solutions have developed this kind of management systems and can advice how to implement this tool for supply chain management in your company.