Sustainability is at the core of Polestar. The Swedish automaker is set on making vehicle development, production and ownership the cleanest process it can possibly be. A key part of that process is auditing partners and suppliers.
“We all wish that we could trust everything that actors say in a value chain, but we know that that is not the case,” Head of Sustainability at Polestar, Fredrika Klarén, told Newsweek.
Various parts of the supply chain are more susceptible to corruption than others. “The metals and mineral sectors are notorious for corruption and opaque behavior,” Klarén said. The corruption traditionally extends from the licensing and permitting of those doing materials extractions to the supply chain.
More than 50 percent of the global reserves for 11 of 14 key critical minerals required for new energy technologies come from countries where corruption is seen as rampant according to the London Mineral Exchange.
“What we have set out to do again is to kind of go about this in a different way than the automotive industry normally does it,” Klarén said.
When she worked in the fashion industry, notably for six years at Kappahl Group, the sustainability head noted that efforts for responsible sourcing were harmonized within the industry.
“When I came to automotive, I realized that no one is really doing that in this industry. They’re all looking at their direct suppliers and then the rest of the supply chain is just a black hole,” she said. Klarén leaned on her experience to develop Polestar’s sustainability program, modeling it after the industry she knew best, fashion.
She explained: “We are trying to establish a program that is more like the fashion industry program, where you use third-party organizations to audit. That means that a supplier can do one audit, and then they can share it with multiple customers. We combat audit fatigue and we secure that we work in an efficient way and a transparent way.”
The auditing results are transparently presented per vehicle in Polestar’s annual sustainability report next to diagrams of the vehicles that show other important facts about each model’s eco footprint.
Currently, just 45 percent of the company’s suppliers are audited. Klarén was quick to point out that the 45 percent covers those suppliers at the highest risk of negative impact.
The goal is 100 percent, but there is no firm timeline attached to that. “It will be a work in progress for years to come. But absolutely, our end goal is that we have these harmonized, impactful audit schemes across our industry that can help us alleviate so many risks that we have,” she said.