However, a Sustainable Procurement Policy brings tangible benefits:

• Reduces external environmental, economic, and social risks. Many scandals involve first-tier suppliers, like Nike and Adidas working with suppliers that discharge toxins into rivers in China, or Apple, sourcing electronics from overseas companies with poor working conditions.
• Fosters Competitive advantage by leading suppliers to innovate – innovative products create value for the company. 
• Increases the company’s attractiveness for partners, customers and talents. 

• Drives internal change management by promoting new sustainable behaviours within the teams. 
• Is cost-efficient, especially when considering the whole life cycle of a product: saves materials, energy, reduces waste and pollution.

1. 1. Identify your starting point. What is your sustainable purchasing profile? 

• Is there a global sustainability policy in your company? How does it influence the procurement policy? 
• Is your company’s higher management supporting a sustainable procurement policy? Green procurement is a step-by-step process that requires top management commitment and support.
• What are the main environmental impacts and risks of your company’s activities? 
• Has your company evaluated its carbon footprint? In many companies, the supply chain has the biggest carbon footprint  (scope 3 GHG emissions).
• What are the products or services produced by your company that most impact the environment? 
• Try to identify environmental impacts of your products or services over their whole life cycle, i.e. from raw material to the end of a product or service’s life.
  

1. 2. Define improvement areas, develop a strategy and build an action plan

Identify the most significant procurement categories: 

• Consider which products, services or activities are the most strategic for your company.
• Considering these strategic products, services or activities, which ones have the biggest environmental impacts?
• Prioritize sustainable criteria considering your company’s industry.

If needed, you might start implementing on a small category to test the approach before extending to other categories.

Set tangible procurement objectives, such as: 

• Increasing the number of suppliers holding a CSR rating such as Ecovadis
• Increasing the number of suppliers holding a sustainable certification such as PEFC for paper,  
• Increasing the share of green products/services, 
• Decreasing suppliers’ carbon footprint with your products or services (link to carbon management part).

Build an action plan and prioritize: 

• Evaluate each purchasing category based on the defined criteria, 
• Classify your purchasing categories started with the most significant procurement field to operate.
  

1. 3. Redesign the purchasing process

Start with this first challenging question: do you really need this product or service? Indeed, frugality is the best way to save money and protect the planet!

Detail environmental factors to be included in the specifications:

• These factors will motivate your suppliers to innovate, 
• Examples: green transport, packaging, maintenance, old products removal, product traceability… 
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 Select green suppliers to compete for Request For Quotation (RFQ): 

• Ask them for certifications,
• Ask for a standard evaluation such as Ecovadis,
• Choose local suppliers (to limit transportation),
• Evaluate suppliers’ sustainable practices.
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 Include sustainable choice criteria in the suppliers' offers analysis: 

• Add a sustainable global ratio in your evaluation: from 10 to 20% of the total scoring,
• This sustainable evaluation could include sustainable or eco-certified products, sustainable packaging, local production, environment-friendly transportation methods, other specific criteria depending on the purchasing category.
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 Limit the number of purchase orders to minimize logistics and transport: 

• Aggregate orders among services/departments, 
• Buy products in bulk to reduce the packaging used per item,
• Define a minimum amount for an order,
• Limit the number of suppliers to aggregate volumes.
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Where appropriate, specify the environmental criteria that need to be included in the contract.

1. 4. Consider products and services’ Life Cycle as well as the total cost of ownership

• This method aims at obtaining a global vision of environmental impacts. For each step of a product’s life cycle, you need to describe all the different environmental impacts. 
• Standards are provided by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO): ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 describe the four main phases of a Life Cycle Approach.
• Prioritise the most significant environmental issues.
• Use a step by step methodology. 
• Try to answer the following questions (see chart below, non-exhaustive list).

6. Measure and monitor performance using KPIs

Evaluate and report on your sustainability policy’s performance.

Monitor different levels:
Define global procurement targets and KPIs such as:

• Increase the number of sustainable products or services purchased. KPI: % of products and services purchased by the sustainable procurement principles.
• Increase the number of local suppliers. KPI: % of local suppliers among the total of suppliers.

• Reduce carbon footprint for main products’ volumes: limit water and energy consumption and/or transport. KPI: suppliers’ water and/or energy consumption. 

• Grow your pool of suppliers holding a CSR certification. KPI: % of suppliers with CSR certification.
• Reduce the use of hazardous raw material.
• Decrease the weight and volume of your packaging and introduce reusable packaging. 
• Reduce the volume of raw material. 
• Limit the number and the frequency of deliveries and monitor orders’ volumes. 
• Increase the number of tenders with CSR criteria. KPI: % of tenders with CSR criteria.

Detail procurement targets and KPIs per procurement categories.

7. Complete your actions with carbon compensation/offset

This approach should be considered only once you have already conducted sustainable procurement actions plans. 

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To go further: 

• See ISO 14001 international norm  which provides practical tools to design and implement an environmental management system.
• See Ecovadis certification.
• When suitable, be careful about the sustainable practices of your suppliers’ suppliers: lower-tier suppliers also contribute to your sustainable procurement plan and generally reduce your sustainability performance and increase your risks.