Sustainable Procurement
Sustainable Procurement is a process whereby organisations meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves value for money on a whole life basis in terms of generating benefits not only to the organisation, but also to society and the economy, whilst minimising damage to the environment.
Stenmoores approach is to embed “sustainable” requirements in our best practice category management methodology – we believe it should drive all procurement and supply chain solutions.
We believe sustainable solutions should be “core” activity for any best practice procurement organisation – and not viewed as separate to, or different from normal procurement activity.
Why undertake sustainable procurement now?
It is becoming both increasingly important and increasingly straightforward to implement sustainable procurement solutions for several reasons:
- Increasing availability of labelled environmentally and socially sound products and services. As the market for such products and services rapidly grows, so the quantity and quality of offers grows. In addition the wide coverage of environmental and social product labels at the national and international level has made it easier to start sustainable procurement initiatives. Such labels enable buyers to set environmental and social targets and objectives and measure the delivery.
- Opportunities for collaboration. Many public sector organisations are now working to implement sustainable procurement. Interested authorities have much to gain by sharing experiences and information.
- Pressure to implement sustainable procurement from the general public is growing as more information becomes available and awareness of environmental and social issues increases.
- Preparing for future regulations. As environmental regulations become increasingly strict, a proactive approach, keeping ahead of legislation, is likely to be more efficient than having to quickly respond once it is in place.
Challenges
Although the benefits of sustainable procurement are clear and widely recognised, a number of specific technical challenges remain in implementation:
- Lack of clear definitions. Many procurement professionals still struggle to define what an “environmentally and/or socially preferable” product or service is, and how to include demands in tendering.
- Changing the “purchase price only” mindset. A key challenge identified by many public sector organisations is changing behaviour within purchasing departments – in particular using purchase price alone to decide between offers, rather than the full life-cycle cost of the product or service.
- Integration into management systems. Decentralised organisations require effective management systems to ensure the consistent application of environmental and social initiatives.
Solutions
Stenmoore offer a sustainable procurement gap analysis service, and solutions to “close the gap”.
Stenmoore Gap Analysis:
Stenmoore can provide detailed analysis to answer the following questions:
- Where are you now? Detailed assessment of your current performance.
- Where do you need to get to?
- How do you get there? Detailed route map for meeting the business requirements
Stenmoore Sustainable Procurement examples
We have many examples of procurement category initiatives that have delivered sustainable solutions, for example:
- Integrated print solutions – significant reductions in print devices, the latest implementation reduced devices from 980 to 165. The carbon footprint was significantly reduced – electricity consumption reduced, ink cartridges and toners collected and re-cycled (previously hadn’t been possible), reduction in use of paper as default settings on all machines was for double sided printing. Plus, overall print volume was reduced resulting in a reduction of paper usage of 40%. All paper used was 100% re – cycled. All legacy and obsolete equipment collected and re-cycled by the supplier. The higher specified equipment was re – cycled to local charities, community organisations and local business start ups.
- ICT equipment – we designed a three year refresh programme with standard specifications for different levels of equipment. Low energy usage equipment was installed, all packaging material re-cycled by the supplier, legacy equipment re-cycled or donated to local organisations.
- Bottled water dispensers – eliminated and replaced by mains fed dispensers. Eliminated delivery journeys of the bottled water supplier reducing the carbon footprint. Plus eliminated the use of plastic water bottles.
- Transport solutions – initial focus was on reducing and eliminating duplicate journeys and routes, plus developing the local supply base to ensure on going development of sustainable strategy including low emission technology i.e. all vehicles have particulate filters installed whenever possible. On going continuous improvement programme to develop hybrid vehicle solutions and drive efficiencies.
There are many other examples – construction projects, temporary and interim staff, furniture and other revenue spend categories.