21 Facts About Sustainable procurement

Sustainable procurement is a process whereby organizations meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves value for money on a life-cycle basis while addressing equity principles for sustainable development, therefore benefiting societies and the environment across time and geographies.

Indeed, procurement practitioners have drawn attention to the fact that buying from smaller firms, locally, is an important aspect of sustainable procurement in the public sector.

Sustainable procurement is a spending and investment process typically associated with public policy, although it is equally applicable to the private sector.

Organizations practicing sustainable procurement meet their needs for goods, services, utilities and works not only on a private cost–benefit analysis, but with the intention to maximizing net benefits for themselves and the wider world.

Sustainable procurement is used to ensure that purchasing reflects broader goals linked to resource efficiency, climate change, social responsibility and economic resilience, for example.

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Sustainable procurement involves a higher degree of collaboration and engagement between all parties in a supply chain.

Many businesses have adopted a broad interpretation of sustainable procurement and have developed tools and techniques to support this engagement and collaboration.

Sustainable procurement aims to promote conservation and responsible management of resources by using renewable or recycled materials wherever possible and reducing waste.

Sustainable procurement involves looking at production practices and making sure there are not any negative impacts to the environment such as pollution, biodiversity loss or habitat disruption.

The most straightforward justification for green Sustainable procurement is as a tool with which to address climate change, but it offers the broader capacity to mitigate over-exploitation of any and all scarce resources.

Green Sustainable procurement introduces into the Sustainable procurement process a comparison between alternatives based on the criterion of their environmental impact.

Sustainable procurement is used to address issues of social policy, such as inclusiveness, equality, international labor standards and diversity targets, regeneration and integration.

Central governments, sustainable procurement is typically viewed as the application of sustainable development criteria to spending and investment decisions.

Sustainable procurement allows governments to mitigate key issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, improve resource efficiency, recycling, among others.

Broad-based Sustainable procurement strategies are prominent across the EU while it is an increasingly influential concern elsewhere, most notably Canada.

The General Services Administration, an independent establishment and government corporation, is responsible for promoting green Sustainable procurement and provides federal agencies with selling and purchasing guidelines and suggestions.

Green Sustainable procurement is primarily done by federal contracting personnel and program managers – but it is not restricted to such professionals.

At market-level, sustainable procurement is typically instrumental: authorities seek to address policy through procurement.

Green Sustainable procurement can help local governments save money, create local green jobs and improve their environmental sustainability.

On December 8,2006, the Greater London Authority became the first public-sector body to publish a sustainable procurement policy, promising to award a "distinct competitive advantage" to those companies which demonstrated a commitment to sustainable procurement concerns.

Sustainable procurement is as applicable to the private sector as the public sector, and certainly its proponents aspire to see its application across all areas of the economy due to a vast amount of material available on the internet for organizations and companies wishing to improve their sustainability performance.