SAN FRANCISCO: Logistics members of the Clean Cargo Working Group (CCWG) can now use an online collaborative platform to access reliable Sustainability scorecards on their partners' performance.

The CCWG, an initiative of the San Francisco-based Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), has partnered with platform-provider EcoVadis to standardize sustainability reporting requests for the sea freight supply chain.

EcoVadis will now align its environmental assessment questionnaires for sea carriers with Clean Cargo's environmental performance survey framework.

Angie Farrag, associate director for BSR's Transport & Logistics Practice claimed the new tie-up underlines Clean Cargo's position as the industry standard for ocean container emissions collection and reporting as well as a commitment to support the "deeper integration of environmental performance criteria into business decision making processes".

The new partnership will allow EcoVadis Fortune 100 customers to have access to more reliable data from an expanded base of carriers. At the same time it will enable 18 ocean carriers and 17 forwarders and shippers to avoid duplication of effort by leveraging one common environmental reporting framework.

Commenting on the tie-up, Laura Taal, Heineken's Sustainable Procurement manager said robust and transparent metrics are key to being able to measure a reduction in the company's distribution CO2 footprint. "As a long-standing member of Clean Cargo and EcoVadis we are pleased to see two leading initiatives in sustainable supply chains converging, as this will facilitate integration of sustainability metrics in our Sea Freight procurement decisions more easily."

Julien Topenot, group environment director for CMA-CGM added: ""We've seen in the past years a significant increase of customers' requests related to Sustainability. Convergence of those [sic] two leading standards where CMA CGM Group has been a member for years will benefit the whole shipping industry through improved efficiency and clarity to our customers on our sustainability performance."

The CCGW includes 16 of the world's largest container carriers representing 60 percent of ocean capacity. Forwarder members include Damco. BDP and DB Schenker. Shippers include Walmart, M&S, Nike and Ikea. Since 2008 they have collectively offset 50 million tons of CO2 and since 2009 decreased their average emissions 16 percent.