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.
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.
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.
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.
PRTR+Carbon data disclosure:
Since 2006, over 31,000 factories have responded to their environmental records and publicly disclose their environmental information.
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