Carbon Disclosure Project to assess world business CO₂ footprint

WASHINGTON, Jan 20, 2008 (AFP) - The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a consortium of 315 top institutional investors assessing industries about their CO₂ emissions, announced Sunday a new partnership to extend its global initiative to companies and suppliers. With members including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Allianz and HSBC that manage assets of more than 41 trillion dollars, CDP since late 2007 has been working with some of the world's largest companies to help them assess greenhouse gas emissions through their supply chains, said its CEO Paul Dickinson.

"The Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration (SCLC) is a key step towards a unified business approach to climate change," he said on announcing the new partnership.

The SCLC sees the CDP teaming up with some of the largest purchasing global organizations, including Dell, Hewlett Packard, L'Oreal, PepsiCo, and Reckitt Benckiser.

They join Cadbury Schweppes, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Tesco, Imperial Tobacco, and Unilever, which signed on the third quarter of 2007.

Each SCLS member, in turn, has selected up to 50 suppliers to work with them and to respond to the CDP pilot information request in the first quarter of 2008.

The CDP information request gathers detailed information on comp