Social and ethical issues are to be incorporated into supply chain auditing at the UK’s largest retail chemist.
Boots the Chemists, which sells around 27,000 product lines through 1400 stores, is to include questions on criteria such as working conditions in standard quality-control questionnaires sent to suppliers.
Boots group head of environment Phil Stubbs said the move was a natural progression from the company’s stance on green issues.
‘Boots the Chemist has had a quality system for its supply chain for the last 15 years, but in 1992 we incorporated environmental factors into that,’ he said.
‘Now we are carrying out a similar exercise by incorporating a broader range of ethical issues. We accepted that it would be strange to concentrate on environmental issues and to forget other ethical dimensions.’
Stubbs said the process would probably take ‘a few years’ to settle in. ‘Suppliers initially found it difficult to adjust to new environmental conditions and it will probably be the same in this case,’ he added.
The move is outlined in the Boots Group’s first external environment report, which says the company last year surveyed the social and environmental position of around 1000 companies across a broad range of suppliers from photo-processing companies to manufacturers of wooden gifts.
The report also reveals that Boots Contract Manufacturing (which makes products for Boots businesses and others) and Halfords, the Boots-owned vehicle accessories retailer, have revised their supplier questionnaires to include formal assessments of suppliers’ environmental management systems.
Publication of the environment report means that the Boots Group now has triple bottom line reporting, with a community review as well as its annual financial report.
Although the group had prepared internal reports on its environmental performance for a number of years, it had never published them externally.
Publication of the 26-page report coincides with a new environment section on the company’s web site at www.boots-plc.com
This shows that total company energy use increased by six per cent last year, against a background of a five per cent increase in turnover.
However, diesel consumption fell by six per cent, despite increased business. This was partly due to new policies that have maximised outward and return loads, plus improvements in routing and trailer design.