Nielsen’s global environmental sustainability efforts represent our holistic approach across our internal footprint, grassroots work and varied stakeholder groups, allowing us to create a positive ripple effect throughout our value chain. Nielsen’s Supply Chain Responsibility program plays an integral role in that. The Supply Chain program at Nielsen engages with our suppliers on the full spectrum of impacts that our purchasing has—environmental, social and ethical—to ensure that we stay true to every aspect of our citizenship commitments.
“Nielsen’s purchasing power is over $2 billion annually. To us, this means we have $2 billion worth of choices,“ says Jocelyn Azada, Supply Chain Responsibility Director. “We can use our institutional purchasing power to contribute positively to moving our world toward a sustainable, prosperous future, and we are committed to doing just that.”
The reduction of our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and contributions to climate solutions are at the top of the list of our Supply Chain Responsibility program’s environmental impacts, as we seek to expand our knowledge in this space. And to determine where we are now in our emissions’ measurement journey, Nielsen recently worked with a third-party to conduct our first GHG value chain assessment to understand our global supply chain footprint. The assessment enables Nielsen to broaden the reporting of our supply chain across all fifteen categories as outlined by the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard (GHG Protocol), a value-add to our commitment to responsible and transparent reporting practices.
The assessment helped us understand the relevance and emissions for each of these Scope 3 categories, with the final calculations highlighting purchased goods/services and capital goods as the primary source of our supply chain emissions. This data can help inform our procurement decisions in the coming years. Also, when we compared our results with those of other professional services organizations, we learned that our emission profiles are aligned with industry averages. These findings and the recommended continued improvements in our Scope 3 tracking will provide Nielsen with a clearer direction for our supply chain strategy to drive optimal efficiencies in areas where we can have the greatest impact.
“This is yet another vital step in Nielsen’s continuous improvement journey to investigate and expand our internal measurements to scale our collective external impact,” said Yamini Dixit, Director, Global Responsibility & Sustainability. “Focusing on responsible inputs is as crucial as building a desired output to truly and positively move the sustainability needle.“
Nielsen takes pride in monitoring its supply chain’s ESG practices, beginning with internal sustainability assessments, which covers hundreds of suppliers in five global regions, encompassing over $1 billion in corporate spending. This new supply chain GHG assessment, also known as Scope 3 GHG, adds to our established process by giving us more specific data visibility into the emission measurement, which will help us identify relevant actions to reduce our carbon footprint.
Nielsen has reported a detailed breakdown of each category in our 2019 Global Environmental Policy & Guidelines Across Functions.
