Sky's the limit for broadcasting giant

Article taken from Sustainable Sourcing. To view article, click here

For a company that has long broadcast its green credentials it should come as no surprise to find that Sky is setting itself some ambitious sustainability targets throughout its supply chain.

It was back in 2006 that Sky officially declared itself carbon neutral - although a string of complaints to the Advertising Standards Agency in 2008, which were subsequently rebuffed, cast some doubt on its claim - becoming just the second FTSE 500 firm behind HSBC to do so.

Now, after tackling the parts of its supply chain that were within easy reach, Sky is reaching out to its suppliers like never before in order to hit an ambitious new set of targets.

And as Fiona Ball, the company's head of environment told Sustainable Sourcing in an exclusive interview, the sky's the limit.

"We wanted to show that being carbon neutral was only the start, not the end of the journey," says Ball. "The ongoing commitment to reduce our emissions is really the key for us.

"Once you've looked at the low hanging fruit, with respect to areas like electricity usage on site then to continue making reductions you have to make a significant investment."

Recent history has shown that Sky isn't afraid to put its money where its mouth is - and its commitment to reduce emissions across ten separate targets, including its supply chain and procurement operations, remains as strong as ever.

"We've got an over-arching target of reducing emissions by 25% per £1m of turnover by 2020," says Ball. "For our supply chain we have a target with respect to engaging with our 50 most carbon intensive suppliers over the next three years and really engaging them in understanding their carbon footprint and also ways that we can reduce our emissions in the products and services they provide to us."

With most of BSkyB's major suppliers already signed up to reducing emissions themselves, the major challenge facing the broadcasting giant lies with its smaller, niche suppliers.

"We have quite a strict procurement process when it comes to environmental criteria but we don't want to just go out and set a target on environmental policy," says Ball.

"We want to help them understand what they can do to reduce their footprint and although a lot of the big companies already have internal teams tackling this area, we wanted to really focus on small and medium-sized businesses that don't really have the expertise in-house.

In collaboration with its environmental charity partner, Global Action Plan, Sky is offering consultancy to SMEs throughout its supply chain. And it this kind of innovative approach to cross-working that Sky hopes will make a major difference over the next decade.

"That level of engagement is quite different," says Ball.

Indeed it is - and it's the kind of approach that is lifting Sky's environmental programme to a higher ground.

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