Last week I had the joy to in depth talk about sustainable procurement of indirect materials at a dedicated roundtable. A big thank you goes to the team of SUSTAINX who did a fantastic job of organising everything, and so, bringing attention to a totally under-managed topic.
Here are our key takeaways:
➡️ Although not being in companies’ focus, it is important to understand sustainability challenges within indirect sourcing categories and the respective improvement potential
➡️ Currently, there is no label for products like monitors, headsets etc. to support customers / purchasers on making the “more sustainable choice”
➡️ The ESG-SCORE allows customers / purchasers to select products based on their sustainability value similar to the Nutri-Score
➡️ The underlying ranking is developed by following a three-step-logic: materiality analysis, identification of sustainability performance indicators (SPI) and consolidating this data into a relative sustainability score
➡️ Each product receives a label based on its ESG-SCORE, which can easily be integrated into procurement systems or online shops
➡️ Based on the ESG-SCORE, managers can ensure their budgets are allocated to more sustainable products
➡️ Collaboration is key: we are all working with the same indirect materials, so let’s join forces to make sure that everyone can make more sustainable purchasing decisions
And here's the recording of the full session: