New UL Initiative Increases Supply Chain Transparency for Purchasers and Supports Manufacturer Efforts to Address Human Rights Abuses

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Sep 21, 2017, 10:30 ET

MARIETTA, Ga., Sept. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- UL Environment, a division of UL LLC (Underwriters Laboratories), a global safety science leader, announced today they are collecting data to identify products made by manufacturers that have policies and procedures in place to protect against human rights abuses throughout their supply chain. This information is displayed as search criteria in UL's widely used product sustainability database, SPOT.

Recognizing the demand for transparency, UL developed SPOT to provide public and private procurement officials, architects, designers and other users an outlet to find credible information on the health and environmental impacts of a given product. The new information collected provides an added level of transparency into the overall societal impacts of manufacturing that product – information that has long been missing from traditional green product software tools and search engines. This added transparency is of particular importance to the U.S. federal government, and agencies such as the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).

Sourcing products from manufacturers who have responsible supply chain practices in place remains a challenge for the U.S. and other government and institutional purchasers. To assist purchasers, the GSA has developed a new responsible business conduct module that provides guidance and a set of best practices for identifying and mitigating risks relating to human trafficking, forced labor, and other human rights. GSA has recognized UL's efforts in the space, and now lists UL SPOT on the module as an additional tool to help purchasers support responsible supply chains.

This information is collected on a voluntary basis and will enable manufacturers in the UL SPOT database to indicate that they have practices in place to prevent and address corporate social responsibility concerns in their organizations and throughout the supply chain. They will also be able to include a link in SPOT to publicly available information that supports this claim so that it can be easily accessed by SPOT users.

"UL is excited to leverage the SPOT platform to collect this information, which has really never been done before," said Alberto Uggetti, vice president and general manager, UL Environment. "Through SPOT, we are enabling companies to demonstrate their strong corporate social responsibility policies on a public platform accessible to professional purchasers."

About UL Environment

UL Environment works to advance global sustainability, environmental health, and safety by supporting the growth and development of environmentally preferable products, services, and organizations. We help companies achieve their sustainability goals—and help purchasers, specifiers, retailers, governments, and consumers find products they can trust. UL Environment offers environmental claim validations, multi-attribute product certifications, environmental product declarations, indoor air quality certification, product emissions testing, organizational sustainability certification, and consulting. For more information, visit http://industries.ul.com/environment, and connect with us via Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

About SPOT

Since its release, SPOT has been the trusted source for architects, designers and purchasers to find over 45,000 products featuring credible data. Users can search by credit, certification and more. Our REVIT™ add-in makes it even easier for you to access product data from SPOT and assign it directly to projects.

About UL

UL fosters safe living and working conditions for people everywhere through the application of science to solve safety, security and sustainability challenges. The UL Mark engenders trust enabling the safe adoption of innovative new products and technologies. Everyone at UL shares a passion to make the world a safer place. We test, inspect, audit, certify, validate, verify, advise and train and we support these efforts with software solutions for safety and sustainability. To learn more about us, visit UL.com.

CONTACT: Sarah Partridge
Marketing Manager, Environment & Furniture
UL Supply Chain and Sustainability
T: (678) 444.4083
C: (404) 277.9118
E: [email protected]

SOURCE UL LLC