Supply Chain Mapping

Closing the loop with ‘value streams’

Overview - Achieving “zero waste” is a key pillar of nearly all sustainability initiatives.  For most retailers, approximately 12% of their total waste comes from retailers operations, while the remaining 88% is generated by the supply chain members who produce the products.   This 88% provides a significant opportunity to generate high volumes of raw materials, with a predictable surety of supply, that can then be regenerated into a variety of raw materials for unrelated manufacturing processes within in the same retailer supply chain. 

For centuries, people have been finding value in the ‘waste’ produced/discarded by others.  Converting these ‘waste streams’ into ‘value streams’ by linking suppliers to other suppliers increases profits for both while they partner to support their key retail customer’s own goal of “zero waste.”  Sustain specializes in connecting and forming these “closed loop” relationships.  Client projects have involved a spectrum of opportunities that exist in the expansive supply chains serving major U.S. retailers including store return products, polyester, cotton, PET, HDPE, PVC, glass, leather, and a range of biodegradable materials.
 
Project Example – In a recent project, Sustain worked with the store returns of a major U.S. retailer to identify reclamation facilities capable of receiving, deconstructing, sorting and bailing raw materials to be repurposed into new products to be produced for sale at their stores.  As part of this retailer’s project, a household appliance manufacturer was asked to change it’s vendor status from ‘destroy at store’ to ‘return to vendor,’ and in doing so was challenged to reduce it’s waste and mitigate the costs associated with this change.  Through a dynamic resource plan, a third-party consolidator with relevant expertise was identified to rework the product so that it could be sold as ‘refurbished’ items as well as to dismantle the damaged product for use in their own components (e.g. copper, white plastic, dark plastic, glass and tin).  This ‘value stream’ of raw material is now in a recycled or regenerated form that is traceable back to the specific supplier of a specific retailer.  The raw material is then bailed or boxed for sale to a regrinder or smelter with traceability, so the same supplier can utilize the material to produce their products from their customer’s own ‘value stream’.  As a result, the company’s score for innovation, with its most significant customer will be elevated.
 
Benefits -  As many retailers establish zero waste goals, store returns are scrutinized as retailers determine who will “own” the returns and associated disposal costs.  This is in turn leading many retailers to ask that suppliers handle store returns of their products in support of “zero waste” goals.  Conversely, retailers are begining to value products that utilize a closed loop ‘value stream’.  Suppliers are finding value in other suppliers traceable ‘value streams’ as well.  It is this ‘PULL’ that enables the creation of high value supply chains that provide transparency and traceability of what are now ‘value streams’.