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Research Digest – January 2011

Summary

The report provides global electronics companies with context for China’s water challenges, discusses results of a supplier risk assessment and presents recommendations and resources for identifying water pollution risks in the global electronics supply chain. For this research, 10 Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) members submitted supplier names to BSR for matching against a publicly available database containing information on corporate environmental violations.

Key Findings

• With growing concerns globally and in China about access to water, more and more companies are developing proactive strategies to mitigate water risks.
• Electronics manufacturing has become an important economic contributor to China’s success, but its rapid growth has come with environmental costs as well, including negative impacts on water quality.
• As governmental enforcement of wastewater standards improves, along with public awareness and civil society engagement on environmental issues, global companies have a growing need to effectively understand and mitigate potential risks.
• BSR’s analysis of the 640 suppliers matched against the database found that:
• There were 33 suppliers with recorded environmental violations in the database, representing approximately five percent of the sample;
• Approximately 30 percent of the 33 supplier matches were for supplier names submitted by more than one EICC member company, showing the interconnected nature of the electronics supply chain;
• More than 20 percent of the suppliers with recorded violations had multiple matches, showing the possibility for systemic issues at these companies.

Author(s)

BSR

Source

PDF report

Tags: BSR, China, EICC, Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition, electronics companies, electronics supply chain, environmental violations, supplier risk assessment, water challenges, water pollution risks