Procurement Ponderable: Supporting your entity’s sustainability goals through procurement

This topic may not be front-of-mind for you. It is, however, something you should consider. Even if your work capacity is limited (i.e., you or part of you is the procurement business unit), there are shortcuts you and your clientscan take to contribute to making the world a better place for people. One noteworthy shortcut is using existing cooperative contracts for sustainable products created by entities that have the capacity to award such contracts. Although cooperative contracts that are awarded through competitive sealed bidding based on satisfying minimum design and formulation requirements for sustainability are good, contracts awarded through more robust, best value procurement processes that consider the relative sustainability of competing products as far down the supply chain, as practicable, and throughout the life cycle and in the afterlife are obviously better. 

If your procurement business unit lacks the capacity to create its own contracts for sustainable products, begin by seeking out existing cooperative contracts for sustainable products. The products for which such contracts exist include but are not limited to simple, relatively low-dollar and relatively low-risk items like cleaning products, office paper, paint, furniture and carpet. If you have difficulty finding contracts you might use through the cooperative procurement groups and state and local government procurement business units, ask those parties directly for the cooperative contracts they have for sustainable products; even better, encourage them to make it easy for you and other potential users to find those contracts yourselves. Of course, you don’t have to limit your search for contracts to those for relatively low-dollar and relatively low-risk products. You also can look for contracts for high-dollar and/or high-risk requirements like, e.g., IT products, services and solutions for which there can be several significant sustainability considerations at every stage during and beyond their life cycles.

If you are interested, seek out opportunities to participate in planning and creating cooperative contracts for sustainable goods, services and solutions. Some cooperative procurement group or states or localities may not welcome your participation, because they don’t develop their contracts that way. So, initially, approach only those cooperative procurement groups and state and local governments that already employ the true “lead agency” model and ask them if you can participate in planning, creating and otherwise providing input for their sustainable contracts. As for the other groups and state and local governments, encourage them to allow your and other entities to participate.

In closing, governments at every level in the United States and Canada cannot only use existing cooperative contracts to procure existing sustainable products, services and solutions at competitive prices, they also can combine their enormous purchasing power to drive the ever-increasing sustainability and overall value of such items. This will require not only as much early participation as possible by multiple public entities in planning and creating the contracts. It also will require both rich collaboration with industry and other subject matter experts at every stage and financial incentives for sellers to provide and continuously improve the sustainability of their offerings.