The Product Sustainability Roundtable is a network of sustainability experts from some of the world’s largest and most respected organisations. For more than 24 years, PSRT members have collaborated to deepen their understanding of issues and trends, share collective experiences and expertise, and strengthen capacity for addressing sustainability challenges. On April 4-6, we held the PSRT North American Spring meeting hosted by Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Johnson & Johnson presented on their leading Earthwards® product innovation process, and provided members with a truly unique ‘inside view’. They openly shared with members how Earthwards® is being used and implemented (including a demo of their intranet site), and discussed the challenges and successes to date on trying to “fully institutionalize” sustainable design into existing product development processes.
Core to the success of the PSRT is the shared experiences and learning from other member companies. At the Johnson & Johnson meeting, members discussed a variety of sustainability topics at the top of their business agendas, including:
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- Emerging sustainability trends, issues and requirements, such as: the changing political landscape, science-based targets, scope 3 GHG calculations, EU Product Environmental Footprint, Target’s new chemicals strategy, and methods to assess the social impact of sustainability, just to name a few.
- Embedding sustainability as an innovation driver (as one member put it, “sustainability is the new code word for innovation”), as well as how to operationalize circular economy to go beyond incremental improvement and identify breakthrough innovations.
- Processes and systems to manage an increasing number of stakeholder inquiries and requests for information.
- Integrating sustainability into Go-To-Market and Communications strategies and the role of social media.
In addition, Anthesis presented benchmarking results of member assessments against the PSRT Leadership Framework, a maturity model designed to help companies embed sustainability into every aspect of their business. Members shared their gaps and priorities within the framework, and developed a plan to develop “maturity ladders” that will provide guidance on how to improve in each area of the framework, including checklists, tools and resources, and member case studies.
We look forward to continuing these great conversations at the next PSRT meeting in Milan, Italy, hosted by Whirlpool on May 2-4th.
If you would like more information on the PSRT, or are interested in joining the next meeting, please contact Lauren Bromfield, or alternatively, use the form below:
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Anthesis has offices in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Finland, Colombia, Brazil, China, the Philippines and the Middle East.
