Eighty organizations with more than $100 billion in purchasing power have signed up to pilot a multi-sector program designed to help organizations reduce their risks and contribute to a more sustainable future.
The Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council’s (SPLC) Guidance for Leadership in Sustainable Purchasing v1.0 offers purchasers detailed advice for promoting market innovation and optimizing the environmental, social and economic performance of their supply chains.
SPLC was founded in 2013 by leaders from government, industry, academia, standards organizations and NGOs to solve the biggest obstacle to sustainable institutional purchasing: a lack of standardization in how sustainable purchasing is defined, guided, measured and rewarded. The Guidance is the product of two years of work involving these members.
Some of the purchasing organizations that will be piloting the Guidance include the US General Services Administration, US Environmental Protection Agency, California Department of General Services, Minnesota Materials Management Division, Lockheed Martin, Office Depot, the cities of Cleveland, Portland, and Santa Monica, King County, Emory University, University of California at Santa Barbara, and Portland Community College.
Suppliers will also be participating in the pilot, including Asia Pulp and Paper, ASSA ABLOY, Ecolab, Little Footprint Lighting and TreeZero. Enrollment remains open for those organizations interested in joining the Pilot Program.
SPLC says organizations in a wide variety of sectors and regions can use the guide to understand the environmental, social and economic life cycle impacts of their purchased goods and services, prioritize actions that best address these impacts and benchmark progress toward performance goals. It is a voluntary program that will serve as the basis for a future rating system that rewards organizations that demonstrate leadership in sustainable purchasing.
The Guidance will be released to the public on February 5th at 11AM ET via webinar.
Last year, SPLC unveiled a set of five essential principles to define leadership in sustainable purchasing. By providing a common reference point for sustainability excellence, the Principles were meant to enable greater alignment and benchmarking of sustainable purchasing efforts across all types of organizations operating in the multi-trillion-dollar institutional purchasing marketplace.
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Mike Hower is the founder of Hower Impact — a boutique consultancy delivering best-in-class strategic communication advisory and support for corporate sustainability, ESG and climate tech.
Published Feb 3, 2015 8am EST / 5am PST / 1pm GMT / 2pm CET