Heritage Hosts the 2019 2nd Quarter Meeting of Suppliers Partnership for the Environment

The 2nd Quarter meeting of Suppliers Partnership for the Environment (SP) was hosted last week by Heritage at The Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. Special thanks to Kurt Wirgau, Meghan Hunt and the Heritage team for their support in hosting the meeting and to David Schroeder and Covanta Environmental Solutions for co-sponsoring.

SP membership meetings provide an opportunity for members to share environmental best practices and strategies with their industry peers, learn about emerging issues impacting the environment and their business operations, and to identify opportunities for collaborative action through SP. 

Pre-Meetings and Activities – April 23

The first day of the meeting began with a design-thinking workshop organized by the new SP Emerging Professionals Work Group and facilitated by work group chair Lisa Majchrzak (Honda). The mission of the SP Emerging Professionals Work Group is to pilot fresh, innovative associate engagement initiatives at member companies through benchmarking and collaboration with fellow, diverse industry professionals within the SP network and this workshop provided a forum for participants to share their ideas and identify tangible actions that they can take back to their companies.

The day continued with a meeting of SP’s Responsible Battery Work Group which provides a forum for SP members to work together to advance responsible management of advanced vehicle batteries. Carole Mars (The Sustainability Consortium) led participants in an exercise focused on mapping the value chain of lithium-ion vehicle batteries. The exercise helped uncover new insights and perspectives regarding the flow of materials and information across the value chain that will help inform upcoming work group activities.

Next, there was a meeting of SP’s EHS Forum – chaired by Jack Nunes (Lear) and Greg Rose (FCA) – which is designed to provide an opportunity for deeper discussion on key EHS issues impacting SP members. The theme of this quarter’s EHS Forum was engagement in sustainability and participants had the opportunity to participate in small-group discussions on either senior leadership engagement in sustainability or supply chain engagement in sustainability.

Following the SP work group meetings, Heritage hosted attendees for a private tour of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway followed by a networking reception that evening.

Q2 Membership Meeting – April 24

The following morning, SP’s Work Group Chair Jack Nunes (Lear Corp) opened SP’s 2nd Quarter Meeting of 2019 and introduced Kurt Wirgau (Heritage) who welcomed SP members and guests to The Center and shared information on Heritage’s environmental activities.

Alissa Yakali (Honda) then announced a new collaboration formed through SP between Honda, Edison Energy and Manufacture 2030 to pilot a Honda Green Excellence Program that will collaboratively assist a group of Honda suppliers in achieving their CO2 reduction targets.

The morning continued with updates on current SP working group initiatives related to biodiversity, EHS, IMDS data quality, materials efficiency, responsible battery management and emerging professionals.

SP members and collaborators shared updates on their respective projects and outlined next steps for those work group efforts in the coming quarter and beyond, including presentations from Jack Nunes (Lear), Greg Rose (FCA), Lisa Majchrzak (Honda), Carole Mars (The Sustainability Consortium), Alissa Yakali (Honda), Sam Qureshi (WM), Gary Vegh (ERA), John Bradburn (ERA and Pathway 21), Mark Yamauchi (Toyota), Becky Johnson (GM), Sara Cook (Wildlife Habitat Council), and Kellen Mahoney (SP).

In addition to SP project updates the meeting included presentations from SP members and guests on current and emerging sustainability and business issues, including Gib Hedstrom (Hedstrom Associates), Susan Hunt Stevens (Wespire), Varsha Doshi (CDP), Nena Shaw (US EPA) and Karl Hummel (L&L Products).

Following the meeting, members had an opportunity to tour Covanta’s Indianapolis Materials Processing Facility and learn more about how the facility supports customers in the automotive industry in their zero-waste efforts. SP members may access presentations and minutes from the meetings on SP’s Members Only site.  

SP’s 3rd Quarter Meeting of 2019 will be held on July 16-17 at Henkel in Madison Heights, Michigan. Please contact us if you’d like more information, or to learn more about SP membership opportunities.