Green purchasing has shown excellent resilience during current tough economic time and delivered value through sustainable cost savings thereby breaking the myth that – It’s a social obligation and so you have to necessarily pay an extra premium. There are three most important aspects to be considered while detailing out policy for green purchasing – social obligation, environmental impact & economic benefit. Of these the latter – which is directly related to the cost equation needs to be broadened for life cycle costing approach , so the cost equation not only need to capture cost for energy, waste and duration but also additionally include cost for repair & maintenance, disposable effort, health & safety compliance thereby offsetting any potential financial and environmental risks to the organization in today’s increased regulatory world.
We have noticed that most of the organizations assessment of carbon footprint is mostly limited to ‘organic buying’, ‘local buying’, ‘eco friendly or 'energy star certification’ and reason for this is that there’s no universal criterion which can be applied to every situation. Buyers need to define green policy for each spend category keeping following broad criteria in mind:
- Look for energy efficiency
- Avoid hazardous, toxic foot print in the product or services
- Conservation for heat, light, water and other natural resources
- Look for refurbishment and recyclability
- Easy disposability like bio-gradable
- Leverage technology automation
This brings us back to the most debated aspect – How compliant your purchasing processes are?
Unless organization leverage technology to embed green policy into its purchasing processes- like green specification & standards, green selection criteria, life cycle costing approach, green clauses in contracts at an enterprise level, it is difficult to comply with green purchasing commitment. It is extremely important for organization to leverage the green technology – eSourcing, eProcurement and eAccount Payable (which avoid paper heavy manual processes – saving tones of paper) thereby making its purchasing processes not only more effective & efficient but would also ensure complying with green purchasing policies at an enterprise level.
