Every summer when I was a kid, we’d pile in the car and drive about 12 hours or so from our home in Omaha, Nebraska, to visit my grandparents and other family in Michigan. I looked forward to it all year; we camped, hiked, and explored green forests for entire days sometimes.
As a nature-loving family, we did a lot of camping, and I learned a lot from it. Everyone had a job, even the kids, because there was a lot to do to make sure we had proper shelter, fuel for a fire, food to eat, and to be prepared for whatever the weather might bring. I think it’s where I first really learned about the importance of collaboration.
Years later, I worked as a chemist at Corbion’s plant in Blair, just a 45-minute drive from where I grew up. I liked my work, but became really intrigued by the things I learned about Corbion’s sustainability efforts. The more I learned, the more I thought about new possibilities for myself, and ended up going back to school to get my Master’s degree in Natural Resources. I then spent a year working as an environmental auditor before coming back to Corbion as Responsible Sourcing Specialist on the company’s Sustainability team, where the ability to collaborate is crucial.
A great, big job worth doing
My job is monitoring Corbion’s supply chain, looking for many different kinds of sustainability risks – threats to the environment, to people, or to the wellbeing of communities. For the most part, I’m looking outside Corbion’s own operations to focus on what happens in the work of our suppliers, which is especially challenging.
While we can’t directly control what our suppliers do, we do make it clear that if they want to do business with Corbion, they have to prove they meet our clearly defined sustainability standards. Our sugar suppliers, for instance, can do that in either of two ways. The first is by earning third-party certification from Bonsucro, a global non-profit governance group with a strong presence in cane-producing countries. The alternative is to sign Corbion’s own cane sugar code – which is roughly equivalent to Bonsucro certification – and demonstrate compliance with our code annually through our audit program. Managing that program through partnerships with third-party auditors is part of my role. Either method enables us to create more ethical and resilient supply chains.
Teamwork is the only way
As an ingredients provider, Corbion’s place in the overall supply chain lies between the makers of consumable end products and the suppliers of raw materials. Our customers depend on us to help them create ethical, sustainable products. But in many cases, it can be very difficult for manufacturers to gain visibility all the way down to what happens on the farm. Engaging with our suppliers is critical, because doing it all ourselves simply isn’t practical … the task is often just too big when working with global supply chains in a global economy.
No business can guarantee that nothing its supply chain contributes to deforestation, a lack of biodiversity, soil degradation, health and safety risks on farms, pollution of the environment, human rights abuses like forced labor or child labor. But certification and supplier codes do ensure that our suppliers are engaging with us to minimize risks and create more resilient supply chains. That’s important to our customers, to our business, and to the world. And it takes a lot of collaboration and commitment to do it well.
I liked helping out around the campsite when I was a kid, and I still like doing hard work that matters. To me, meeting customers’ needs while protecting people and the environment is the only way to run a truly successful business.