THE ROAD TO SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT

Procurement is one of the essential, if unsung, engines of the economy. How can we ensure that it’s sustainable?

sustainability.

For many, a sustainable procurement process comes down to smart economics. Proxima is a consultancy that helps companies – FTSE 100 ones among them – sustainably transition their procurement and logistics operations. The company’s Executive Vice President for Procurement, Simon Geale, views approaches to procurement as well as sustainability through the lens of spending wisely, and in this regard, the interests of both most certainly overlap.

align with like-minded suppliers, as well as to rate the sustainability and social values of potential suppliers.

“In their contract, there’s a clause that requires them to provide sustainability data and ensure that their values align with expected on-site behaviours across power

AS A FORM OF VALUE”

SIMON GEALE EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT FOR PROCUREMENT, PROXIMA

SELINA DONALD FOUNDER AND CHIEF SUSTAINABILITY ADVISOR, THE BULB

Still, it doesn’t come down solely to checking your partners. A deep understanding of markets is also informative and essential. Only then will sustainable procurement become shockproof. Going back to Simon Gaele at Proxima, he says: “Understanding the supply market means you will get the best outcomes available to you. If you don’t understand the market, you will always buy what you know, or, at best, be constrained by your own ideas and open to supply market risk. That’s a dangerous place to be in.”

Gaele does concede that the market –the lifeblood of enterprise and capitalism – does have a seminal part in the quest for sustainable procurement: “As unfashionable as it is to say sometimes, markets inform what we should be paying for sustainable solutions; even in a deep collaboration where we are ‘designing to X,’ market intelligence informs commercial value calculations, top and bottom line.”