Previously, in our series highlighting Trina Solar’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2019-2020, we focused on Trina’s trek toward its internal sustainable development goals.

In this second installment of the series, we’ll take a look at Trina’s commitment to caring for the planet beyond the company’s internal operations. This means ensuring sustainable purchasing and supply chains, as well as implementing a robust environmental management system for new facilities and PV installations.

Sustainable purchasing and supply chains

Manufacturing high quality and reliable PV modules requires an extensive supply chain to source all the necessary components. This includes raw materials such as silicon wafers and glass, in addition to auxiliary materials, infrastructure, equipment, spare parts, packaging, logistics services, personal protective equipment, office suppliers, certification services and much more.

With more than 80 procurement items in Trina’s supply chain, we know that it’s just as important that our partners adhere to the same strict sustainable development goals that we do.

To ensure sustainable purchasing and supply chains, Trina Solar has developed a stringent supplier selection process. The process includes an investigation on environmental and social assessment, a site supervision assessment and, if needed, action corrective plans to improve supplier performance. Once a supplier meets these requirements, only then does Trina add the company to our approved vendor list.

Trina has also pledged to constantly assess its global supply chains to maintain the protection of human rights. To meet this goal, Trina strictly prohibits partnering with any suppliers that use labor arising from children, prisons, bonded individuals or any other form of forced labor. Trina maintains a zero tolerance policy for any form of forced labor in its supply chain.

Additionally, in order to avoid using conflict minerals - that is, metal minerals mined in places that may produce serious human rights and environmental issues - Trina has established a conflict-free mineral policy, management system and process. This policy keeps conflict minerals out of our supply chain.

Ecological and biodiversity protections

Whether it’s building a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility or a major utility-scale PV power plant, these places typically require a good-sized chunk of land. In some instances, the locations of these future sites can potentially contain environmental features and biodiversity that are highly important for preserving the planet’s well-being.

So to guarantee the company always maintains the highest standards of environmental protection principles, Trina established a standard management process in full compliance with the ISO 14001 environmental management system.

This means that whenever Trina Solar decides on site selection and designs a new factory or PV power plant, the company conducts an extensive environmental impact assessment. With this assessment, Trina evaluates the positive and negative impacts on the local environment from the proposed project. And, that includes maintaining responsible land development and boosting the efficiency of energy and resources during construction.

Our factories and PV installations also reserve a certain percentage of land to benefit local biology distribution. We continuously improve the living environment and promote the development of biodiversity where factories are located through activities such as public events, environmental awareness training and incorporating biodiverse enhancement to projects. For example, at a PV site in Dorset, London, Trina set up bird houses and bat nests and planted local wildflowers, while keeping PV modules high above the ground to maintain grazing land.

At Trina, we care about the environment and that shines through in many ways. We’re a company committed to sustainability throughout our entire manufacturing and operation process and we’re always looking for more ways that we can contribute to a cleaner future.

Want to learn more about Trina’s efforts? Download the full 2019-2020 Corporate Social Responsibility Report, check back soon for the next installment of this series or reach out to the experts at Trina Solar.