Together for Sustainability

This case documents the origin and development of Together for Sustainability (TfS), a chemical industry initiative dedicated to raising sustainability standards throughout the industry’s supply chains. In 2011, six Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) from some of the world’s biggest chemical companies collaborated on a solution that would enable their companies to jointly advance supply chain sustainability—namely, eliminating adverse environmental, human rights, and labor impacts by suppliers. Towards this end, the six CPOs would build Together for Sustainability, a standalone non-profit organization that would coordinate the measurement of member companies and their suppliers’ sustainability performance. Over the next decade, TfS scaled from 6 to 50 member companies. TfS has transformed the chemical industry by creating a template for collective action and setting new sustainability standards for supply chains. It must now decide what lies ahead and how it might go about achieving those goals. In 2024, TfS was at a critical juncture in its development. While TfS had earned a reputation as a leader in sustainability both within and outside the chemical industry, representatives from TfS member companies were now immersed in vigorous debates as to how to scale their initiative—and their impact—even further. Members were divided as to whether to expand their initiative into other industries or to remain focused on the chemical industry. Moreover, others were beginning to question whether TfS’s non-profit model was truly the best medium for scale, or if a for-profit model would potentially be better suited to maximizing impact. What aspects of their initiative were specific to the chemical industry? What might translate to other industries?