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The Guidebook

3. Background to sustainable procurement

3.1 What is sustainable procurement?

Sustainable procurement is about procurement that is line with sustainability principles; that is procurement that takes environmental and social factors into account in purchasing decisions. It is about looking at what products are made of, where they have come from and who has made them.  It’s even about looking at whether the purchase needs to be made at all. 

A definition is: “A management process used to secure the acquisition of goods and services (“products”) in a way that ensures that there is the least impact on society and the environment throughout the full life cycle of the product". 

The important words in this definition are as follows:

Management process.  Sustainable procurement is not merely an administrative procedure: its adoption and implementation requires commitment, training, resources and constant attention as a part of the strategic and operational management of an organisation. 

Acquisition.  The procurement process includes consideration of how the product is to be sourced.  This consideration may result in a decision not to acquire anything or a decision to re-use an existing resource.  The sustainable procurement process is not merely about products that are “purchased”.

The least impact. There are few human activities that lead to no external impacts and sustainable procurement is no exception. But for procurement to be sustainable, the product or service acquired should have less impact than other equivalent products.

Society and the environment. Procurement that is sustainable takes account of both social and environmental issues; this will include the conditions of people living or working in or near any land or factory where the produce is sourced, manufactured or transported and all manner of environmental impacts.

Full life cycle. That is for the life-time of the product “from cradle to grave”; including design, growing, extracting, transporting, primary and secondary processes, and the full life-time use of the product, concluding with its disposal (or re-use).  For a fuller discussion of life cycle analysis click here.

It is of course very difficult to secure goods and services that are completely dependent on sustainably managed renewable resources, that have no non- recyclable end product and have no adverse impact on the workers or communities that are engaged in their provision. However, the organisation should be able to make the case that all practicable steps have been taken to minimise the risk of these generally unwanted side effects. The organisation should be prepared to be held to account for its performance in this area. How is this achieved and how do we show that?

3.2 Why is sustainable procurement important now for businesses?

Sustainable procurement is an essential element in -moving towards a more sustainable society.  Consequently, there is increasing pressure on organisations from customers, clients, government and the public to put sustainable procurement into practice.  These pressures arise from several sources:

• The widespread public perception of problems affecting society and the environment relating for example to poverty, global warming, and loss of biodiversity, (click here for an overview of these issues).  Sustainable procurement can be a positive response to problems that may seem intractable.
• Public initiatives which affect public approaches to procurement, and which through taxation (or positive incentives) seek to influence the way in which all consumption and procurement is undertaken; it will be important for business to take account of these initiatives in its future planning. (see details)
• From within both public and private sector organisations there is a need to reduce costs, secure supply chains and manage risk and reputations.  Organisations find that the introduction of sustainable procurement measures can help them make progress on all of these areas.  [see details]

3.3 What is sustainable development?

To understand the implications of sustainable procurement and how to implement it, it is helpful to examine sustainability principles in more detail.  There are a wide variety of definitions of sustainable development, and it is for organisations to consider and adopt that which best suits their own needs.  One starting point is the definition currently used by the Scottish Executive which is as follows: 

“The fundamental aim of sustainable development is to secure the future.  We have seen how actions in the past have made life more difficult for us today.  Developing sustainably means ensuring that our actions today do not limit our quality of life in the future.  So our vision is based on the principles that we should:

• have regard for others who do not have access to the same level of resources, and the wealth generated;
• minimise the impact of our actions on future generations by radically reducing our use of resources and by minimising environmental impacts;
• live within the capacity of the planet to sustain our activities and to replenish resources which we use”.

The key elements of this are the need to consider both people and the environment and the need to focus on the future.  However this is a very general statement and it is helpful to examine a number of other approaches that set out the needs in more detail. Examples of approaches given in the resources section are:

• The Natural Step;  [see details]
• A five capitals model from Forum for the Future  [see details]
• A 12 capitals model from Forum for the Future –developed from the five capitals model; [see details]
• An approach to sustainable livelihoods from the UK Department for International Development; [see details]
• An ethical code for trading from the Ethical Trading Initiative [see details]. This is a very helpful detailed statement of general principles relating to employment conditions which could form the basis of a business’s code.
• Criteria for development to minimise impact on biodiversity produced by the World Resources Institute [see details]