Sally and Nina from the Environment Agency talk us through worked examples of how to assess your priority areas for addressing sustainable sourcing in your business using their experiences.
3. EA Background – Who we are?
Environmental regulator, advisor, flood
prevention.
Over ½ our costs (£650M) are spent with
suppliers
77% of environmental impacts lie in supply chain
Suppliers are key to helping us deliver our
corporate objectives
Construction largest spend and risk area
Sustainability Plan – supply chain focus
3
5. Session objectives
What do you spend your money on?
Where to focus your efforts?
Simple tools to understand what the risks and
opportunities are for your category or spend
What you should ask suppliers
What to put in your contracts to manage risks and
realise opportunities.
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6. Exercise 1 - Understanding your impacts
Use the template on your tables to consider the impacts of
the spend categories (15 mins)
Environmental Risk
Social Risk
Commercial & Business risk
Corporate priorities
Feedback what you found from this exercise
(2 mins per group)
7.
8. Exercise 2 - Understanding your impacts
IT Equipment /Clothing examples
Identify top 3 risks/opportunities (5 mins)
Take one and work through the procurement cycle (MAT).
Use template on your table (10 mins)
Volunteer to feedback (2 mins each group)
10. Summary
Know your spend data
Consider the impacts:
Environmental Risk
Social Risk
Commercial & Business risk
Corporate priorities
Determine your priority categories
Manage impacts through procurement lifecycle
Monitor, track and review performance
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Keep it simple – you can spend a long time documenting risks and opportunities, push for sustainability to be included in your evaluation criteria for the contract. There are lots of competing priorities for the business to consider and often sustainability gets a nominal look in.. Prioritise by spend/risk and focus on your Top 10 categories of spend..... Simple tools that help you focus..
Efficiencies – always point out the savings that can be made from taking a sustainable approach, demand management, reducing waste, whole life costing approach – reducing in use costs etc..
Buy in and ownership from the business – embed into your corporate strategy, make each part of the business accountable for demonstrating their own sustainability objectives, from in house activities and their supply chains..
Embedded within Corporate Strategy, Procurement approach, category managers are knowledgable about their priority risks and opportunities and know how to address them in the procurement process, and business ownership for making sure that they are managing the contracts effectively.. Use ecxisting tools and processes where available.
Track and monitor performance, report on progress and sell the benefits that have been delivered to encourage others to do the same.
S
S
DEFRA Flexible Framework - A simple maturity matrix to help organisations understand how to embed sustainable procurement within their organisations.
DEFRA Prioritisation Tool – A tool to assess the sustainability risks associated with an organisations spend.
EA Risk Assessment Tools & Category Guidance – extracts were shared as part of the workshop and available on request from Sally Taylor. The risk assessment tool is used for contracts to help assess the sustainability risks/opportunities associated with the purchase. The Category Guidance provides information on sustainability risks associated with the EA’s top ten high risk categories and gives examples of how these could be managed throughout the life of the contract. Other leading organisations may have tools available and may be happy to share on request.
WRAP Sustainable Procurement Guidance – General advice on sustainable procurement, including training modules and examples of model wording.
Government Buying Standards – Mandatory wording for specifications used b y Government, but useful wider as good practice.
Standards Map - this is a tool that enables you to compare various eco-labels to identify which ones best meet the priorities for your organisation e.g. you can compare the FSC & PEFC timber labels to see what criteria are assessed.