Why green supply chains?

In recent decades, the globalization of manufacturing has accelerated. There is a growing consensus among business communities regarding the central importance of supply chains to a company’s environmental and carbon footprint. Brands must therefore take an active role in encouraging suppliers to enhance environmental performance, improve resource and energy efficiency, and reduce their supply chain environmental impact and carbon footprint.

IPE calls on brands to incorporate environmental compliance and climate action into their sourcing standards and to use procurement incentives to accelerate supply chain green transformation. Rewarding good environmental performance and carbon management with greater business is the single best point of leverage for changing the culture of tolerating pollution and reducing one’s overall corporate footprint.

Green Supply Chain CITI Evaluation

To address the “triple planetary crisis” of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, while advancing coordinated efforts in carbon reduction, pollution control, green expansion, and economic growth, IPE fully upgraded the Green Supply Chain CITI Index to version 11.0 in 2024. Building on a decade of work, the upgraded CITI Index quantitatively evaluates green supply chain management practices of Chinese and international companies across five dimensions.
CITI Index also aims to provide actionable, data-driven guidance to help companies systematically advance green supply chain development—from meeting basic compliance to exceeding regulatory requirements. This includes:
1) Expanding green supply chain management across more dimensions: including addressing climate change, reducing resource use and waste emissions, managing chemical use and new pollutant discharge, combating plastic pollution, promoting biodiversity conservation, and guiding green consumption;
2) Extending Environmental Management Upstream: encouraging suppliers to fulfill their environmental responsibilities, reduce ecological impact and carbon footprints, and foster green and low-carbon transitions across the value chain;
3) Enhancing Transparency and Credibility of Supply Chain Management: strengthening stakeholder communication, building trust through comprehensive information disclosure, assisting investors in assessing the progress and potential of low-carbon transition, guiding consumers in making green choices, and promoting multi-stakeholder engagement in both China and global ecological and climate governance efforts.

Search the CITI scores for corporations or read the CITI Evaluation Methodology in details.

Corporate Climate Action CATI Evaluation

During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, China’s ecological civilization entered a critical stage focused on carbon reduction as a key strategic direction, aiming to synergize pollution reduction and carbon reduction, facilitate a comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development, and achieve a qualitative improvement in environmental quality. At the same time, an increasing number of multinational companies have made greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction commitments in the post-Paris Agreement era, striving for net-zero emissions across their value chains. In this context, with technical support from the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, IPE upgraded the Supply Chain Climate Action Index (SCTI) developed in 2018 to the Corporate Climate Action Index (CATI).
CATI also aims to provide companies with a roadmap to initiate climate action, guiding them to start from greenhouse gas accounting and inventory creation, identify key emission sources, set quantitative emission reduction targets, and develop targeted emission reduction plans. These targets should be broken down into major production processes and the value chain, carry out large-scale emission reductions based on the emission reduction pathways of their industry, track and disclose the progress of target completion, and simultaneously drive and empower upstream and downstream partners to explore the greenhouse gas emission reduction potential at each stage from raw material extraction, production, distribution, storage, use to disposal, and recycling, thereby initiating climate action.

Search the CATI scores for corporations or read the CATI Evaluation Methodology in details.

How to achieve green supply chains?

Where are the environmental risks in my supply chain?

The first step to supply chain management is to know who your suppliers are. You can do this by mapping your suppliers by region and industry. IPE recommends that brands map beyond their direct suppliers to include Tier 2 and 3 manufacturers, which often have much higher environmental impacts and GHG emissions.

How do I determine if my suppliers in China are in compliance?

Brand can search their suppliers in IPE’s Blue Map database, which contains more than 3.31 million corporate violation records and real-time emissions monitoring data for over 18,000 high impact factories as of the end of 2024.

For small numbers of suppliers (less than 50), brands can simply type in their supplier’s Chinese name or Unified Social Credit Code into the Blue Map database search box.
Use IPE’s Blue EcoChain tool for automated searches and updates on supplier violations and corrective action in real time via app or email.

What do I do if I find suppliers with violations?

Brands should contact the supplier and request or require that they submit a public explanation detailing the cause of the violation and their rectification plans. Many leading brands now require their suppliers to track their own environmental performance using the Blue EcoChain, and more proactively disclose response public explanations once new violations or excessive emissions arise. Non-compliance records may be removed via GCA audits. Click to read more.

Public Explanations and Record Removal

How do I move up my supply chain to reach the highest environmental impacts?

To reach high impact suppliers, IPE recommends partnering with direct suppliers to map out raw material and chemical suppliers, as well as wastewater and hazardous waste treatment facilities. Brands can either conduct screening themselves or ask their direct suppliers to screen their own supply chains, thereby extending sustainable management practices upstream and downstream. By extending environmental management, brands protect themselves against potential supply chain disruptions when factories are forced to close due to outstanding pollution issues.

  1. Raw Materials
  2. Processing
  3. Manufacturing & Assembly
  4. Direct Suppliers
  5. Waste Treatment
  6. Packaging
  7. Retail & Distribution

How do I reduce my supply chain energy, water and chemical use, pollution discharge and GHG emissions?

Brands are strongly encouraged to go beyond basic regulatory compliance by monitoring and steadily reducing the energy, water, and chemical use, GHG emissions and pollution discharge of their suppliers, as well as biodiversity impacts. Brands are encouraged to focus first on the suppliers most heavily contributing to their environmental impact and carbon footprint, and they can do this by requesting that their suppliers to disclose their carbon and pollutant emissions, as well as resource and energy data via IPE’s platform or other public portals.

Pollutant release and transfer register (PRTR) data disclosures refer to enterprise publicly disclosing potentially hazardous chemical substances and/or other pollutants released into the air, water and soil and transferred off-site for treatment and disposal as well as biodiversity impacts.

PRTR data disclosure enables enterprises to track resource use, pollutant discharge and ecological impacts and improve performance and information transparency. PRTR data also enables the governments, purchasers, financial institutions, investors, and the public to gain a comprehensive understanding of enterprises’ environmental performance and to empower multi-stakeholder participation in ecological and environmental protection.

In 2013, IPE developed a voluntary Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) data disclosure platform based on existing PRTR platforms worldwide and has incorporated greenhouse gas and biodiversity indicators over the years.

How can I share my best practices with the consumers and other stakeholders?

Since 2006, over 31,000 factories have responded to their environmental records and publicly disclose their environmental information.
Join leading enterprises in environmental responsibility and sustainability today.

Click “FAQ” & “User Guidance” to access more information

AI Q&A
Hi! I'm your AI friend for environmental Q&A.

Feel free to ask me anything!

      DeepThink
      The responses are generated by the AI model you selected. IPE cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the content, and it does not reflect our stance or views.