Scoring Suppliers on Sustainability

At Cisco, we rely on more than 600 suppliers worldwide to manufacture, test, ship, and recycle the products we design. And, we expect these suppliers to meet the same high standards on ethics, labor rights, health and safety, and the environment that we apply to our people and operations.

So how do we manage that task over such a large network of suppliers?

One of our most powerful tools is our supplier scorecard. In the last fiscal year, we added sustainability criteria to the scorecard for the first time, and we are encouraging our suppliers to report their performance publicly in a Corporate Social Responsibility Report report and to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions through the Carbon Disclosure Project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW_oWGejPXo

The video above shows how we are collaborating with one of our suppliers, D.W. Morgan, to optimize environmental and labor improvements.

We will continue to refine our scorecard process and help suppliers improve their capability for calculating and reporting their impacts.

By working together with this network of suppliers, we can have a much bigger impact on sustainability that any one company could have alone.

Please read our 2012 CSR Report to learn more about our supply chain.