Sustainable procurement
Paul van Helden | Procurement Manager
‘Pulling together to reduce our dependency on scarce, costly raw materials and the volatile raw materials market will make us all stronger.’
Sustainable business practices
Running a sustainable business also means pursuing sustainable procurement practices. Also referred to as Socially Responsible Procurement or Circular Procurement, what exactly is sustainable procurement? And how do you incorporate it into your policy?
In making procurement decisions, you look at the price, quality, and delivery time of a product. With sustainable procurement, you also look at social and environmental aspects. With circular procurement, products or materials that have reached the end of their service life or useful life are used optimally in a new cycle.
In our previous item, we already told you more about how we handle waste and recycling. In this what will be our last item on CSR for now, we will be focusing on procurement. Will you read along again?
In a previous item, we told you about our ISO 14001 certification. One part of that is to scrutinise the entire supply chain. We have, for example, formulated assessment criteria for our suppliers and made selections based on their sustainability credentials. Where there is room for improvement, we encourage, motivate, or help them.
Paul van Helden, Procurement Manager, explains:
‘Sustainable procurement is an important CSR tool. That we develop products with a very long service life is excellent. And so is our production waste separation and recycling.
But procuring sustainable materials obviously also contributes to waste reduction. If the quality and service life of our products can still be guaranteed, we will always choose recycled plastic and aluminium, for example.’
How does Paul see the future?
‘By engaging with other partners in the supply chain, you can make a difference in pushing back the exploitation of natural resources. On top of that, pulling together to reduce our dependency on scarce and costly raw materials and the volatile raw materials market will make us all stronger. We will continue to work hard for that!’