The Sustainability Secret: Procurement as the Difference Between Goals Met and Goals Missed
St. Petersburg, FL – Darshan Deshmukh, President of ProcureAbility, was recently featured in Supply & Demand Chain Executive.
Supply & Demand Chain Executive
2025 was meant to mark a turning point for sustainable supply chains. For years, companies have circled this date on their calendars, setting ambitious pledges to transform packaging, sourcing, and energy use. The vision was bold: by mid-decade, procurement would be at the forefront of the climate fight. Yet as the deadline arrives, the story is mixed. Some companies are holding firm1 on their commitments. For example, McDonald’s2 pledged that all its guest packaging would come from renewable, recycled, or certified sources by the end of this year. Microsoft3 aimed to achieve 100 percent renewable energy consumption in 2025.
Meanwhile others are quietly scaling them back in response to market pressures, growth demands, and shifting priorities. Last year, Air New Zealand4 lessened its goal of reducing its emissions by 28.9 percent by 2030 to just a 20-25 percent reduction, which still goes beyond the airline industry’s goal to reduce emissions by 5 percent by 2030.
This article examines where corporate sustainability goals stand today—what’s been achieved, what’s been delayed, and what these course corrections mean as businesses look ahead to the even steeper 2030 climate targets. The central question: can supply chains rise to the challenge, or will ambition continue to collide with reality?
Read the full article on Supply & Demand Chain Executive.
Sources:
1. PwC’s Second Annual State of Decarbonization Report, 2025
2. By 2025, all of McDonald’s Packaging to Come from Renewable, Recycled or Certified Sources; Goal to Have Recycling Available in All Restaurants, 2018
3. Powering sustainable transportation
4. Air New Zealand: 20230 Emissions Guidance, 2025
5. What are Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions?, 2024
President
Darshan has extensive global operations and delivery experience in the managed services and advisory fields. He has deep expertise in building global programs focused on procurement, strategic sourcing, category management, and supply chain/procurement transformation.
Prior to joining ProcureAbility, Darshan spent most of his career building large-scale, global delivery operations. He spent a decade in a series of global leadership positions in IBM’s Integrated Supply Chain organization and then joined Denali Sourcing Services as operations leader and was instrumental in establishing and growing the company’s global delivery capability. After Denali’s acquisition integration with WNS, Darshan transitioned to tech start-ups, OpenGov and Icertis, where he built their global professional services and customer success organizations. Darshan has worked with global clients in high-tech, financial services, manufacturing, retail, utilities, and healthcare/pharma.
Darshan holds an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering, a graduate degree in supply chain from Penn State, and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. He loves international travel, movies, and everything food, and divides his time between Seattle and Palm Springs.
ProcureAbility, a Jabil company, is the leading provider of procurement services, offering advisory, managed services, digital, staffing, and recruiting solutions. For nearly 30 years, we have focused exclusively on helping clients elevate their procurement function.
We combine leading methodologies, analytics, market intelligence, and industry benchmarks with our uniquely flexible and customizable service delivery model. Global organizations of all sizes trust ProcureAbility to transform their procurement operations, drive growth, and reimagine what’s possible.
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