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Useful supply chain sustainability resources, all in one place

Case studies and white papers and toolkits, oh my!

As more companies hunker down to research and develop specific strategies for addressing the environmental and carbon footprints of their supply chains, the NGO and consulting community has obliged with literally hundreds of helpful resources — ranging from templates to tech toolkits — to guide that journey.

The challenge, frankly, often comes down to figuring out the best place to look for the information.

The Environmental Defense Fund is hoping to make the quest a bit simpler with the launch of what it describes as a "crowdsourced" knowledge resource center for corporate sustainability professionals that aggregates "hundreds" of case studies, strategy templates, executive interviews, webcasts, articles and reports. 

The initial focus of the library, dubbed the Supply Chain Solutions Center, is on six areas — agriculture, energy, chemicals, waste, forests and freight — and the site can be filtered by those topics. Examples of such things you might find include case studies from Smithfield Foods, IKEA and Panera Bread, as well as models for corporate chemical policies.

Our goal is to make finding sustainability solutions as easy as finding a movie on Netflix or a song on Spotify.
Aside from EDF itself, the contributors of this wealth of information at launch this week during GreenBiz 19 include BSR, CDP, Conservation International, Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, Further with Food, GreenBiz Group (the parent organization of this web site), ReFED, the Sustainability Consortium and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. Marketing firm Shelton Group designed the site.

What’s more, EDF is actively soliciting contributions from other well-established organizations focused on advancing the cause of corporate sustainability, according to members of the NGO’s marketing and communications team. "Our goal is to make finding sustainability solutions as easy as finding a movie on Netflix or a song on Spotify," said Elizabeth Sturcken, managing director of EDF+Business, in a statement about the new online information portal.

EDF will serve as curator. According to the EDF communications team, no membership fee is required to access the information. Individuals who register for the site will receive customized notifications about new resources or updates to existing ones, they said.

On the flip side, "expert" organizations that provide content will gain more insight into what information sustainability teams are digesting. The site is also designed to connect browsers directly with companies looking for additional consulting or advisory resources. There’s also an event listing, with details about conferences, podcasts and briefings related to the primary topic areas represented on the site.

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