Our global supply chain is structured to create value locally and globally and help us meet our customer needs. We aim to co-create an ethical, inclusive, circular, and carbon-neutral supply chain, jointly manage our impacts, and innovate for sustainability.
We distribute our products from our strategically located distribution centers. Orders are electronically transmitted to the distribution center nearest to the customer's location. This helps us deliver high-quality service at top speed to our customers and supports our climate goals by ensuring the shortest possible transport distance for delivering our products.
In the U.S., we continue to work with United Parcel Service (UPS), one of our key transport partners, on our joint commitment to sustainability. Using an enhanced network, special operating plans are in place to reach certain customers by ground in one day—reducing the need for air transport and helping to further reduce carbon emissions related to customer delivery. We review and monitor the emissions from this enhanced network annually to avoid unnecessary emissions and identify further improvement opportunities.
Packaging matters to our business and our customers as it protects the product during storage, distribution, and transport.
The choice of packaging material, the extent of damage prevention, and the product-to-package ratio all determine the overall footprint of our packaging operation. We also work with our logistics partners to assess our packaging processes and used those observations and recommendations to improve our packaging processes, practices, and choice of materials across our distribution centers.
We are committed to upholding human rights standards in all areas of our business and support the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which provides a practical, useful framework for businesses to manage and address the Company's human rights impacts in the supply chain. Please see our Human Rights Statement here. We also support various existing and emerging supply chain transparency laws, such as those in effect in California (the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act 2012), the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (2021), the UK (the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015), and the Australia Modern Slavery Act 2018.
We respect human rights throughout our supply chain with our Global Supplier Code of Conduct. The Code includes provisions for our suppliers and vendors to comply with such as business integrity, labor practices and human rights, health and safety, and environmental management.
We are committed to working with a diverse supplier base that includes small businesses owned by ethnic minorities, women, LGBT+, disabled, veterans, service-disabled veterans, historically underutilized business zones (HUBZone), and small business enterprises, to provide our customers with the best selection of high-quality products and to foster innovation, additional perspectives, and develop stronger relationships with the communities we serve.
Our dedication to supplier diversity is a continuous learning journey and our processes will continue to evolve. As the demographics of our customers and their patients change, we are committed to supporting them and partnering to serve their specific needs.
We maintain high-quality and regulatory standards. Our U.S. facilities are registered with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), as applicable, and State Board of Pharmacies and International regulatory authorities as appropriate. We maintain ISO 13485:2016 or ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System certification.
We comply with both the FDA's Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) for pharmaceutical traceability throughout the supply chain and the Unique Device Identification (UDI) regulations for medical devices.
We have strict procedures in place, aimed at minimizing the health and safety risks of the products we distribute. See page 22 of our Sustainability and CSR report for more information.