By Thomas Miner
January 20, 2011 – Japan’s second largest automaker announced major revisions to their Green Purchasing Guidelines last week, expanding the reach to include all Honda suppliers around the globe and establishing a more robust framework for tracking and reducing the environmental footprint of their complete supply chain.
The announcement was made on January 13th and the company says that all parts and materials suppliers will receive the guidelines this month – even those beyond Scope 1. Previously, the guidelines only applied to chemical suppliers in the country of Japan.
In addition, Honda added “Environment” as a supplier evaluation item to the guidelines, joining Quality, Cost, Delivery, and Development as the main areas of assessment. They also upgraded their EMS requirement to include all areas of activity and a guideline around the improvement of product fuel efficiency.
The upgrade by the automaker was long needed; the original Green Purchasing Guidelines were established a decade ago, in 2001.