Making value chain collaboration a reality: The Sustainable Shipping Initiative

For those following the sustainability agenda, it’s no secret that the flavor-du-jour for the past couple of years has been cross-sector, cross-market, cross-‘everything’ collaborations. Yet how does a company looking to create real change bring the right players together across the value chain to identify and implement the solutions that will work at scale?

In our latest Sustainability Progress Update, we highlight our success building new relationships with both customers and suppliers where a renewed focus on sustainability is delivering mutual benefits. Yet there is still a lot to be done; new opportunities to cut cost and reduce risk, but also new opportunities to create mutual growth.

As a founding member of the Sustainable Shipping Initiative (SSI), we are working with leaders in the maritime sector including owners, insurers, banks, class societies and, not least, customers to plan how we can together contribute to – and thrive in – a sustainable future. Progress is not always swift when companies with different perspectives and modus operandi come together, but there is true value in diversity and this is why the Sustainable Shipping Initiative is such an interesting forum for collaboration.

In September 2013, the initial four work streams will deliver the first stage of tangible outcomes, including a new ‘cradle-to-cradle’ system to track and trace materials used to build a ship, and a financial model that will reward owners, charterers and finance providers when retrofitting fuel saving technologies. This is only a first step of course.

For scalable, transformational change we need the rest of the industry to follow suit and I’m personally very excited to see if others will take the gauntlet.

Learn more about the work of the SSI at: http://ssi2040.org