The Supply Chain Initiative
Uniting to Strengthen Every Link
Poor labour and environmental standards in the ICT supply chain have been highlighted in the media and by NGO campaigns in recent years. Concerns begin right at the start of the supply chain, with mining in conflict zones for raw materials used in electronic equipment.
GeSI recognises the critical need to address these challenges and believes the industry must work together to achieve the necessary step change in attitudes throughout the supply chain. While our members are working hard to improve corporate responsibility (CR) standards among their suppliers, there are limits to what individual companies can achieve.
In partnership with the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), GeSI has led industry efforts in this area since 2004. We have developed common tools to improve standards, including a self-assessment questionnaire and shared auditing programme. These standard industry approaches are designed to encourage suppliers to improve labour and environmental performance by presenting an industry-wide call to improve. The common approach will reduce the time and costs incurred by suppliers by avoiding duplication and inconsistency between customers.
Learning and building capability is a key focus of our work and an important aspect of the assessments is educating suppliers on what they need to do to improve performance.
It is not enough to influence the industry’s direct suppliers to improve. We also want them to improve conditions among their own suppliers, and so on down the supply chain. We recognise this will take time but we believe it is essential given the complex multi-layered nature of ICT supply chains.
Supplier assessments (E-TASC)
E-TASC (Electronics – Tool for Accountable Supply Chains) is a web-based self-assessment tool for suppliers, based on a comprehensive set of ethics, labour rights, health and safety, and environmental criteria. Launched by GeSI and the EICC at the end of 2007, it already has more than 270 subscribers.
Suppliers fill in a single questionnaire on E-TASC and can share their responses with multiple participating customers, rather than completing separate assessments from different companies. The tool includes a risk assesment that automatically provides a report identifying potential risk areas and best practice examples to help improve performance. The questionnaire is available in Chinese, English, Japanese and Spanish.
E-TASC also includes a tool to help members conduct an initial risk assessment of suppliers before proceeding to the more in-depth self-assessment. It is based on high-level information about the type of supplier and country of operation
Validated audit programme
GeSI and the EICC have introduced a new validated audit programme to accompany E-TASC. This common auditing service is intended to save suppliers and GeSI members the time and expense of multiple audits. Suppliers are audited once and can share the findings with all GeSI member companies. In 2008, more than 50 suppliers took part in trial audits, and more are now joining the programme.
The audits are carried out by independent auditors, selected by the GeSI/EICC Supply Chain Working Group. Co-ordination and communication of audits is managed by an independent audit project manager to keep relationships between buyers and suppliers confidential and prevent anti-competitive behaviour.
Learning and capability
GeSI provides training and materials to increase awareness of social and environmental issues in the supply chain. In June 2008, around 180 people representing 76 companies attended an event in China to publicise our objectives, launch the validated audit programme and explain what to expect during the audit process. We plan to turn this into a regular training programme.
We have also commissioned a third party training developer to produce two new online training courses, to be launched in 2009. These will help buyers to understand CR issues, our expectations and the need to integrate CR into supply chain management, as well as introducing tools such as E-TASC. We plan to work with local training organisations and NGOs to continue building capability among suppliers.
Extraction of metals
NGO campaigns such as MakeITFair have highlighted social, environmental and humanitarian issues associated with the extraction of certain metals used in the production of ICT equipment. Mining coltan (a tantalum–bearing ore) in conflict regions such as the Democratic Republic of Congo is a particular concern.
It can often be very difficult to be certain about the origin of such materials due to the complexity of the ICT supply chain, but we have begun work to increase transparency. We are also exploring how ICT companies can effectively influence social and environmental issues associated with mining.
GeSI commissioned a study by independent researchers GHGm to understand how metals are mined, recycled, purchased and used within the electronics industry. The study – focusing on six key metals (aluminum, cobalt, copper, gold, palladium and tin) – was published in June 2008 and is available here.
In November 2008, we engaged with key stakeholders to discuss the findings of the report and set goals to create an industry statement on mining and a model for transparency in the supply chain. Both GeSI and EICC will continue to work in this area with a broad range of stakeholders, including non-government organizations, government agencies and industry sectors such as electronics, mining, mineral processing and others.
An overview of the current situation and concerns related to conflict minerals and GeSI/EICC goals and activities can be downloaded from SCWG Documents (Communications section) in the Members Area. This Primer for Conflict Minerals is intended for use by GeSI/EICC member companies.
Next steps
GeSI will continue to promote the use of E-TASC within our industry and among suppliers, and plan to integrate our validated audit programme into the E-TASC system. Two new e-learning modules will be launched in 2009, and we will hold another event in China to raise awareness about CR issues in the supply chain.
In association with a third-party research partner, we plan to develop a model to make the sourcing of metals in the ICT supply chain more transparent and more sustainable, focusing initially on cobalt, tantalum and tin. We have already appointed the research partner and supplier candidates have been selected for the study.
Building on our work on the extraction of metals, we are now exploring a material declaration list which will help members understand the CR risks of materials used in their equipment.
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