Facilitating responsible sourcing due diligence

UEBT works to guide and support companies along the supply chain to respond to evolving rules on responsible sourcing due diligence, promoting active collaboration with suppliers in sourcing risk mitigation.

UEBT member companies commit to managing risks for people and biodiversity and also need to respond to growing due diligence policies around the world. Many of these rules initially apply to larger companies and widely traded commodities, but as significant biodiversity impacts and dependencies occur in botanicals sourcing areas, these rules will certainly affect many smaller companies along the supply chain as well as more specialty ingredients.

UEBT supports companies with guidance, tools and support to manage risks, in line with the global UEBT standard.

Due diligence consists of several components, including assessing country and ingredient risks, and also assessing risks in specific supply chains. UEBT offers three tools to support this:

UEBT supplier due diligence platform
UEBT responsible sourcing risk database
UEBT ABS due diligence database

UEBT supplier due diligence platform

The UEBT supplier due diligence platform is a tool that maps supply chain risks, going beyond questionnaires of first tier suppliers to allow suppliers to submit self-assessments of social and biodiversity risks based on the critical requirements from the UEBT standard. It is one of the few due diligence tools that focuses on very important field-based risks at the production level – related to workers, pickers, producers and their local environment.

UEBT responsible sourcing risk database

The UEBT responsible sourcing risk database is an online tool tailored to the particular social, environmental and economic risks related to botanicals. It provides specific risk scores on a set of environmental and social issues from within the UEBT standard, with detailed risk scores for each at the ingredient and country level. It contains more than 200 individual ingredient risk profiles and is growing. The database is regularly updated and allows for combining risk assessments from both the country and ingredient levels.

What makes the risk database unique?

Tailored to botanicals ingredients
Specific information on individual botanicals within countries
Aligned with the UEBT standard and other UEBT tools
Allows combining assessment of ingredient and country risks
Regularly updated

What risks does it show?

The database shares ingredient-specific risks that are related to cultivation, wild collection, and local processing of specific, individual natural raw materials. The risk profiles are created based on reliable data sources, and also first-hand field observations of conventional, uncontrolled practices in that specific ingredient.

Note: this is not a database about risks found in controlled or externally validated supply chains (e.g. certified, verified, etc.). It is also not a list of UEBT members with supply chains found to be in high or low risk conditions.

I want to download risk profiles for my ingredient portfolio. What will these focus on?

The database allows UEBT members to view and download risk profiles specific to a natural raw material in a specific country. The profiles are regularly updated and cover more than 25 social and environmental topics, each given a score of high, medium or low risk. For example a profile might be of Peppermint in Croatia, Ginger in India, or Acai in Brazil etc.

For more information or to schedule a demonstration of the database, write to impact@uebt.org

Risk categies of UEBT due diligence tools

The UEBT due diligence tools are based on the internationally recognized UEBT standard and include a more than 25 sustainability topics grouped into these four categories: