For years, the corporate conversation surrounding sustainability focused primarily on what occurred within a company’s own four walls. Operational energy efficiency, zero-waste-to-landfill manufacturing facilities, and reduced water consumption were the celebrated hallmarks of environmental stewardship. While these internal measures remain critical, the modern market demands a far more expansive view.
Today, sustainability expectations across industries are undergoing a fundamental shift to include responsible sourcing. The dialogue has moved past single-attribute product claims and localized operational metrics toward full value-chain accountability.
To explore how responsible sourcing is shaping the future of product development, specifier expectations, and supply chain integrity, we spoke with two leading industry experts: Connie Hensler, Global Director of Environmental Management & Product Stewardship at Interface (a global commercial flooring manufacturer specializing in sustainable carpet tile and resilient flooring), and Jacob Gentillon, Director of Sustainability at Roppe Holding Company (a leading U.S. producer of commercial rubber and vinyl flooring systems).
Their insights reveal why looking beyond internal responsible manufacturing operations is no longer optional, and how evaluating a product’s true environmental impact requires examining its complete journey.
The “Embodied” Reality: Why Sourcing Matters
When organizations look holistically at their environmental footprint, a pattern emerges: Most environmental impacts occur long before a product ever reaches a final assembly line.
“The direct impacts an end-product manufacturer has in its own operations are only part of the story, and people are beginning to really understand that with concepts like embodied carbon,” explains Gentillon. “The production of the end product is the final step in a [manufacturing] process that has many parts: raw material extraction, production of ingredients like resin, and transportation to the end-product manufacturer. Every step in that chain has its own complex processes, and each one can have impacts on a local or global scale.”
This reality means that any sustainability strategy focusing exclusively on internal factory operations is inherently incomplete.
Hensler points out how significantly upstream activities skew overall impact data. “It is shifting from product-level claims to full value-chain accountability, which is appropriate considering that 43% of our impact (GHG emissions) comes from upstream purchase of goods and services. We are not dissimilar from other manufacturers in this respect.”
Because cradle-to-gate global warming potential (GWP) is largely driven by raw material sourcing, engaging upstream suppliers isn’t just a secondary goal; it’s the key to achieving science-based climate targets.
“With most of our impact being in our supply chain, engaging suppliers is essential to reaching our 2030 Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) goal and carbon negativity by 2040,” Hensler noted. “We can’t do it alone.”
