A group of leaders from government, industry, academia, standards organizations and NGOs are joining forces to solve the biggest obstacle to sustainable institutional purchasing: a lack of standardization in how sustainable purchasing is defined, guided, measured and rewarded.The Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council will launch with a free, live webcast from Washington, DC on July 23 at 1pm EST.
A group of leaders from government, industry, academia, standards organizations and NGOs are joining forces to solve the biggest obstacle to sustainable institutional purchasing: a lack of standardization in how sustainable purchasing is defined, guided, measured and rewarded.
The Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council will launch with a free, live webcast from Washington, DC on July 23 at 1pm EST.
SPLC’s founding members include the cities of San Francisco and Washington DC, California Department of General Services, Office Depot, FedEx, Ecolab, Arizona State and Michigan State universities, UL Environment and FairTradeUSA. Founding partners include the American National Standards Institute, Institute for Supply Management, National Association of State Procurement Officers and the Product Stewardship Institute.
SPLC will help organizations optimize their purchasing for maximum benefit to themselves, society and the planet by:
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Convening leaders from across the institutional purchasing marketplace to codify the practice of sustainable purchasing;
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Recommending methods for measuring the impacts of an organization’s spending;
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Identifying existing leadership standards for addressing those impacts; and
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Defining a leadership recognition program for sustainability in institutional procurement similar to the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program.
SPLC has emerged from and builds on four years of work by the Green Products Roundtable, a multi-sector and multi-stakeholder forum convened by the Keystone Center in 2008.
“The average procurement professional facilitates hundreds of dollars in spending for every one dollar spent by the average American consumer,” says SPLC’s Jason Pearson. “By providing organizations with credible guidance and a leadership recognition program that rewards them for choosing sustainable solutions, we will empower institutional purchasing to lead the transformation of our economy.”
Find out more about the July 23 webcast on the SPLC website.
Published Jun 28, 2013 8pm EDT / 5pm PDT / 1am BST / 2am CEST