Tiffany's Higher Standards: How They Maintain Vendors and Suppliers

Tiffany’s own facilities—spanning diamond cutting and polishing, jewelry crafting and distribution—are operated at the highest standards in the industry. No less rigorous are the standards they use to evaluate their vendors and suppliers. They established a multidimensional Social Accountability Program that includes comprehensive guidelines for the manufacture of the materials they use, all designed to ensure that their vendors and suppliers are held to the same exacting standards that they are proud to uphold.

Currently, over 95% of Tiffany’s catalogue paper is certified to the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and the goal is to make certain that 100% of the paper used in  packaging materials and catalogues is FSC-certified by 2010.

The FSC promotes environmentally and socially responsible management of the world’s forests, evaluating both forest management activities (forest certification) and the tracking of forest products through factories to the marketplace (chain-of-custody certification).

FSC certification assures that wood and paper products come from renewable and well-managed resources. They also are proud to have partnered in the development of a high-end grade of FSC-certified paper that contains 30% post-consumer waste content. This paper is used to print their seasonal Selections® catalogues. The iconic Tiffany Blue® bag has received a green upgrade as well. It's now made from FSC-certified paper and biodegradable plastic film, making the bag a 100% virgin recyclable product.

Tiffany is committed to doing its part to address the crises of global warming by focusing on energy conservation. To that end, in 2007 Tiffany signed on to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Leaders program, an industry-governmental partnership that works to develop comprehensive climate change strategies. As part of the Climate Leaders program, Tiffany & Co. has pledged to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 10 percent per square foot by 2011. Tiffany & Co. is committed to understanding and reducing the impact on the environment by completing a U.S. inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, setting aggressive reduction goals and annually reporting their progress.

In 2006 they installed two very large solar power systems in their distribution facilities in New Jersey to help offset carbon fuel-generated power and contribute to the electricity needs of the facilities.

Since 2006, Tiffany has been a responding company to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which gathers information on the business risks and opportunities presented by climate change as well as greenhouse gas emissions data from the world’s largest companies. The CDP has become the leading standard for carbon disclosure methodology and process and its Web site is the largest repository of corporate greenhouse gas emissions data in the world.