Business Sustainability for Practitioners

The buyer-supplier relationship is changing in more ways than you might imagine. Consumers and retailers are increasingly demanding that suppliers demonstrate their sustainability: How are buyers and suppliers collectively adapting to changes in the market, as well as labor and environmental pressures?

This case focuses on Dell’s efforts to develop an open-source, scalable, and cost-effective supply chain capable of delivering ocean plastics waste to its production facilities, and potentially to those of partnering companies through a consortium. Piyush Bhargava, vice president of global operations at Dell and leader of Dell’s Ocean Plastics Initiative, must deliver a strategic plan for how to proceed with the initiative but has three primary challenges: (1) how to deliver “additionality”, (2) how to operationalize an ocean plastics supply chain at scale, and (3) how Dell should approach developing a consortium to ensure meaningful demand for the material.

In celebration of Earth Day, The Dow Chemical Company and the Erb Institute of University of Michigan are partnering to host the inaugural Elements of Sustainability Series, a free online education event taking place April 16-20, with webinars posted daily at 3 p.m. ET. The week-long webinar series will explore the fundamentals of sustainability as seven renowned academics share their expert insights on the leading global challenges shaping the future of business, society and sustainability.

The University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Sustainability in Business (Erb) and the World Environment Center (WEC) brought together 40 senior-level thought leaders and executives from business, academia, government and nonprofits, as well as selected Erb Institute students, for a roundtable discussion.

Are you concerned about the environment? Do you feel there is still a lot of progress to be made on social issues? Do you have a global perspective? And, most importantly, do you feel that business, more often than not, can be the answer? It sounds like you could be the perfect candidate for a dual degree program at the Erb Institute | Business for Sustainability and we’d love to meet you!

Dave Stangis has been in the sustainability business for over 20 years. As of last year, he quite literally wrote the book on sustainability—twice. The Campbell’s vice president of corporate responsibility and chief sustainability officer first co-authored 21st Century Corporate Citizenship:

The field of sustainability has evolved in recent years to include human rights issues. Consumers and investors have made these issues a priority, so businesses are responding. As they do, collaboration is critical.

The field of sustainability began with environmental issues, which brought about standards and regulations that companies must follow. But human rights issues don’t yet have the same kind of established standards. “It’s still a relatively new dialogue and language for the business community,” said Theresa Loar, an independent consultant who focuses on human rights in business. “While there are excellent UN guiding principles, it’s not the same thing as your government setting certain requirements and standards.”