The telecoms firm hopes to raise the environmental credentials of its supply chain with the introduction of a sustainability assessment tool.

Florian Tremblay, a sustainable development expert at Sagecom, said this tool will enable suppliers to measure their own practices by: “providing useful feedback to suppliers regardless of their performance level, the tool will educate and support individual companies in a tailored and effective way”.

The assessment involves a series of questions to evaluate the company’s existing sustainability practices. The answers are then compared with the best sustainably operated companies in the world. The assessment will finish with some recommendations on how the company can improve its sustainability measures.

The use of BT’s sustainability tool will be tested by Sagemcom, the makers of BT Home Hub. The pilot programme to test the assessor’s result will include the participation of some of BT’s suppliers, in order to study the advantages and limitations of the tool.

“The sustainability assessor means we can extend the benefit and learning of the Better Future Supplier Forum even further into our supply chain”, said Erik Raphael, BT’s wifi and devices director.

This project took off soon after BT’s Better Supplier Future Forum in 2012, where the company sought to develop sustainable business practices.

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