Nature and Procurement
Procurement simply means the things you buy as a business. This is everything from office stationary to vehicles and electricity. What you buy and how you go about purchasing things can have a significant impact on nature.
Good Procurement policies and practices are how you as a business can ensure the products and services you buy are not from materials and resources obtained from unsustainable sources. Some of the most serious impacts on nature relate to resources taken from rainforests like unsustainable hardwoods, or from clearing rainforest habitats to create Palm Oil plantations and other cash crops. Other crops like almonds and avocados can use large amounts of water which can compete with water needed to sustain ecosystems/native species.
What can you do?
When you go to purchase something, think about where your raw materials come from. Take a new desk for example, where was the wood harvested from. What chemicals were used to treat it? Does this impact nature? Are there more sustainable options you could use that are kinder to nature and are easier to reuse, recycle and can be returned to nature?
Don’t know the answers to these questions? Don’t worry. You often won’t! However you have a responsibility to simply ask your suppliers
(the people and businesses you buy things from) about their sustainability and make better choices where you can.
Want to get skilled up in making good procurement decisions?
That is where SBN is here to help.
If you are a large organisation your procurement or sustainability lead can join our Procurement Activators Course or Procurement Leaders Group and be trained in how to identify and source sustainable products and services.
If you are a small or medium sized enterprise we can help you learn for free. SBN is developing a free online procurement toolbox that will be completed later in 2022 and we will provide a link to this once live. This will help you understand the impact you are already having and where you and your supply can improve. Best of all, it will be free.