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These resources will help you to integrate sustainability considerations into procurement and supply chain management through supplier engagement, coordination, and oversight, as well as by using your influence to convene and identifying opportunities for value chain collaboration.
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Our Sustainable Procurement Wheel helps companies to embed sustainability across their procurement and supply chain practices.
Based on research with leading companies, we have identified key practices and curated a selection of the most relevant resources and tools to help you implement them. The inner wheel follows the procurement lifecycle and the outer wheel looks at broader practices supporting change.
Public sector organisations have an opportunity, and an obligation, to ensure that the goods and services they buy align with their environmental and social commitments. This guide helps public procurement professionals to integrate sustainability considerations into public procurement processes and to improve the sustainability outcomes of their buying decisions.
A guide for leaders of companies of all sizes to understand the basics of Scope 3 emissions and how companies should begin to take credible action. The guidance is anchored in the real-world experience of companies that are already navigating this journey.
With the urgent need to reduce global emissions, rapid decarbonisation of our economy is essential, and the key is collaboration across the value chain. Our guide provides practical advice and examples to help companies support their supply chain partners to decarbonise.
You'll find advice on how companies are prompting, influencing, supporting, and investing in their value chain and resources and ideas for how to support six key decarbonisation pathways: renewable energy adoption; energy efficiency and conservation; logistics; materials stewardship and waste; lower-impact agriculture and land-use; and carbon removal.
Companies are recognizing that the goods and services they buy contribute to their environmental and social footprint, often quite significantly. This tip sheet focuses on helping you to improve the sustainability outcomes of your company’s buying decisions and improve the impact your company has on the environment and on communities.
This guide from the UN Global Compact and BSR outlines practical steps that your company can take to achieve supply chain sustainability. This resource provides a wide array of introductory information to better acquaint you with sustainable procurement, such as developing the business case; establishing a vision and expectations for your supply chain; explaining the key aspects of engagement with suppliers; and determining roles and responsibilities. The step-based guide also includes helpful examples that highlight best practices.
Ethical and responsible procurement has become an environmental, economic, and reputational imperative, and yet organizations continue to face broad and significant challenges when translating awareness to action. This report from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing Supplies (CIPS) was created to address that gap. The report includes key concepts and provides practical guidance on the procurement cycle, including identifying vulnerability and risk, evaluating and shortlisting suppliers, and updating ethical procurement programs. It also contains useful practical information that will help you to communicate with suppliers from other regions in the world - particularly in areas with acute social and cultural differences.
This purchasing guide from HP provides a good template for how you can leverage sustainability procurement to advance your sustainability goals. It provides a summary of the relationship between sustainable procurement and meeting the Sustainable Development Goals; the aspirational model of the circular economy ecosystem; and the benefits HP has experienced in aligning its sustainability goals with supply chain impact.
Procurement specialists and sustainability change agents will particularly benefit from the guide’s evaluative criteria on designing products for circularity and on supplier transparency and performance. Although the content focuses on information technology, the principles and scope can be extended to apply in other procurement areas.
This white paper from Avetta is a good starting point for junior change agents and procurement specialists to understand the growing importance of sustainable supply chains. It will help you to understand how investors are adjusting their focus to sustainable supply chains and why, and it explores emergent best practices from established leaders.
This guide from the German Ministry for the Environment (BMUB) and the Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) can help you understand how to get started on sustainable supply chain management. Written with small- and medium-sized organisations in mind, it begins by introducing the advantages and challenges of sustainable supply chain management, as well as key topics. It also outlines a 7-step supply chain management process, which covers supply chain mapping, impact and risk identification, sustainability performance measures, internal process adaptation, supplier requirements, supplier evaluation, and reporting.
This set of online tools from Economist Impact are based on data gathered through surveying 1,250 companies on their efforts to mitigate Scope 3 emissions. They will help you benchmark your progress and take action on supply chain decarbonisation. There are four tools provided. The Research Findings page presents a series of key statistics and infographics giving a snapshot of how corporations are managing value chain emissions. The Self-Assessment tool helps you compare your performance on Scope 3 emissions against peers based on your industry, size, and region. It also recommends a customised action plan based on your business context. The Trend Tracker shows how much different scope 3 related topics have been discussed in the news. Lastly, the Scope for Change Spotlight video series highlights examples of value chain decarbonisation. These tools will be most useful to supply chain management and sustainability teams.
This annual report from MIT and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) can help you understand some of the current overarching trends and challenges in supply chain sustainability. Drawing on insights from 1,200+ professionals across 97 countries, the report provides an in-depth perspective on how organisations are turning commitments into action, where progress is strongest, and what barriers remain. It explores the impact of shifting regulations on corporate strategy; how businesses are measuring and managing elusive Scope 3 emissions; and the global race to decarbonise freight transportation. These insights will be most useful to supply chain management and sustainability practitioners.
This resource from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Circular Supply Chain Network can help you understand how to transition supply chains from linear to circular. It features a white paper explaining how circular economy and supply chain management fields are connected and the role of supply chain professionals in operationalising circular economy initiatives. It includes a framework outlining nine focus areas for transitioning to circular supply chain and provides recommended actions and examples of companies overcoming key challenges. This paper is supported by a fact sheet that summarises the nine focus areas. These resources will be most useful to supply chain and sustainability teams.
This data dashboard was created by the Forest Declaration Assessment and Systems Change Lab. It tracks the progress of countries on their commitments to end deforestation by 2030, which were made at COP26 in 2021 under the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use. The dashboard showcases progress on the six articles outlined in the declaration, including ecosystems, trade, livelihoods, agriculture, increasing finance, and aligning finance. For each article, the dashboard provides a summary of collective progress revealing that, in all cases, it is insufficient. The tool also allows users to explore progress on the indicators at a country level. This tool may be particularly useful to procurement and supply chain professionals assessing sourcing regions or sustainability professionals monitoring policy and financing developments around deforestation.
This resource from the United Nations Global Compact can help you to better manage converging risks that may impact your business by placing a just transition at the centre of their risk management strategies. The brief outlines policies and practices your company can implement to manage the environmental and social impacts of your supply chain; highlights the importance of an enabling environment for a just transition (including multilateral guidelines and frameworks, the role of governments, and the importance of multi-stakeholder collaborations and business coalitions); and provides recommendations for businesses to improve their sustainability and resilience, including real-world examples.
Every company, including a small or mid-sized enterprise (SME), has an obligation to respect human rights. This includes when you are buying goods and services. This guide explains how to assess possible human rights impacts in your supply chain and steps your company can take to prevent or mitigate them.
This brief from Re:Structure Lab can help you to better understand how irresponsible purchasing practices are key drivers of forced labour in global supply chains. The brief explains how contracts and sourcing practices can change to promote equitable labour practices and protect supply chain workers from exploitation. It also highlights sourcing tools and agreements that promote decent work and explains the far-reaching reforms required to enable workers to hold business accountable for the terms and conditions within their contracts.
Slavery exists in all stages of procurement, and as supply chains grow and become more complex, it becomes increasingly challenging to ensure freedom, fairness, and safety in the workplace. This resource will help those who want concrete guidance on how to reduce or eliminate the risk of modern slavery occurring in their supply chains. This guide explores effective standards, risk assessments, audits, corrective measures, and practical advice for engaging with suppliers, as well as a comprehensive collection of relevant tools.
GoodWeave is a team of business-minded social change experts and advocates who are dedicated to ending child labor, forced labor, and bonded labor in global supply chains. Their platform and resources will help you to better understand the issue of child labor in global supply chains and to take meaningful, regimented action that addresses the root causes of child labor. We especially recommend their Best Practice Briefs, which will help you to address effective standard setting; perform inspection and monitoring; map out your deep supply chain; engage in effective remediation; and prevent future abuses.
This report from Save the Children and The Centre for Child Rights and Business can help you to understand the far-reaching impact that inadequate working conditions and low wages in sourcing countries have on communities and children, as well as the work required to better remediate, mitigate, and prevent child labour violations. It highlights key child rights risks and risk factors in all sectors, such as the lack of child-centered remediation, lack of access to decent employment opportunities for young workers, and education costs and the lack of access to education, as well as sector-specific child rights risks, such as those in manufacturing, agriculture, and mining. It also features recommendations with sector-specific actions. This resource will be especially beneficial to sustainability, procurement, internal audit & risk, and legal & compliance professionals and teams.
This paper from WRI can help you to better understand a common blind spot in how large companies set supply chain sustainability goals: the lack of focus on people, and especially on small suppliers, workers, and communities. Analysing over 1,000 goals from nearly 700 global firms, the paper found that only 12% of large companies have people-centered supply chain goals, and that 90% of corporate supply chain sustainability goals are designed to push or pull direct suppliers rather than create partnerships of mutual value. The paper highlights missed opportunities to invest in skills, financing, and long-term partnerships, and features three priority guiding questions and examples to help your company move beyond top-down approaches and foster more inclusive, mutually beneficial supply chain strategies.
Launched by the Environmental Defense Fund, the Supply Chain Solutions Center is a “crowdsourced” knowledge resource hub. The library’s current focus is on agriculture, energy, chemicals, waste, forests, and freight, and provides sustainability resources, best practices, case studies, reports, executive interviews, strategy templates, webcasts, and news that can support you in learning about these issues, assessing risk, setting goals, measuring, and reporting. The Solutions Center also brings together sustainability and supply chain professionals, creating a space where platform users can connect and collaborate with other experts.
Written specifically for Chief Procurement Officers and other sourcing professionals, this paper from EcoVadis and Volans can help you to understand the action needed to enable and support a regenerative economy through conscientious procurement. This paper explains the urgent need for a shift towards regenerative procurement, and identifies leading-edge sustainability-related terminology. It also provides case studies of emergent examples of regenerative approaches to procurement.
Developed by the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), this resource was created to improve traceability and responsibility along the mineral supply chain. The resource will help mineral supply companies to address environmental, social, OH&S standards, and governance concerns, as well as to navigate and integrate existing relevant frameworks. The standard has been benchmarked against - and is consistent with - the RMI’s Risk Readiness Assessment and the Responsible Business Alliance's (RBA) Validated Assessment Process (VAP), as well as nineteen other prominent international ESG standards.
This platform was created by the Circular Innovation Council to support Canada’s collective understanding of the circular economy and how purchasing advances it. It showcases a broad range of resources that may be especially helpful for sustainability practitioners and leaders working in Canada, such as case studies from a variety of sectors and industries; guidance and best practices; policies and frameworks; and purchasing tools.
Although created for the Canadian context, many of the learning materials here provide lessons and insights that are equally applicable elsewhere.
This searchable intervention library from IDH can help you identify actionable procurement practices that contribute to sustainability. While it is designed for agriculture-based supply chains, most practices can be applied more broadly. For each practice IDH explains the intervention, the rationale, enabling conditions, risks, and trade-offs.
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