Are you purchasing promotional merchandise for your staff or your next event? Do you ever think about the life cycle of a product and the emissions created from cradle-to-grave before making a purchase? Read on to see how the Reeve team made their decision in purchasing the most sustainable tees for their annual beach clean-up. READ MORE
Are you committed to sustainability but unsure of how it can be realized within procurement? Take away practical tools, approaches and learn of real-world case examples in sustainable purchasing during this practical and inspiring half-day session on sustainable purchasing!READ MORE
Flickr / Pink Sherbert
How many times have we heard it, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”? It’s a management consulting mantra that is repeated so often you could almost tune it out.
“Yes, of course” we affirm to our peers and colleagues. But inwardly most of us would agree that developing good key performance indicators (KPI’s) and accurate tracking mechanisms are generally underdeveloped across the triple bottom line, and definitely in their infancy when it comes to sustainable purchasing.
Yet the reality is that metrics are a key success factor in building out a solid sustainable purchasing program, providing a clear indication of program strengths, weaknesses, and by extension, areas for future development and improvement.
Nonetheless, at Reeve Consulting our experience has been that the development and measurement of quality metrics is often overlooked or identified as a future priority.
We know clients face organizational challenges to implementing quality measurement systems, such as a prioritization of policy and procedure at the expense of performance tracking, or difficulty measuring the ‘green-ess’ of products and suppliers, which can be time intensive and confusing. Further, traditional accounting systems often don’t consider sustainability measures.
While we won’t attempt to address all these issues in a single blog post, some of our recent work has us compiling a set of useful resources for developing customized metrics for sustainable purchasing reporting and management systems, both for measuring overall program performance and specific aspects – such as purchasing categories (e.g. vehicles). We’ve shared a collection of these below.
To get started, we’ve also created a short list of key tips for developing effective metrics, which we encourage our clients to consider at the outset.
Key Tips for Developing Effective Metrics:
Helpful Resources for Developing Customized Metrics
Metrics for tracking at the Sustainable Purchasing Program Level
Metrics for tracking impacts at the Product Level
Flickr / boliston
In a recent discussion paper titled Greening Canadian Hospitals, Community Research Connections reported there are more than 3000 hospitals, medical facilities and surgery centers across Canada, making up a healthcare sector that contributes approximately 10% to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). More than affecting individual health, these facilities impact the environmental, social and economic health of the communities where they operate as well as further afield through their product and service supply chains.
The Canadian health care sector is the second largest single-sector source of dioxin contamination in Canada. It also contributes 20% of all mercury emissions from incineration and 2.1% of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Recognizing the potential of both environmental and economic returns, there has been considerable attention to the greening of health care. A number of hospitals and health authorities have been identified as leaders in the field including those listed below (click on the links to view case studies outlining their achievements).
Primary areas of focus for these groups include reducing energy and water consumption, improving waste diversion practices, and removing toxics. Less common among these facilities is the inclusion of a green purchasing policy. Illustrating this point, a recent review of 10 Ontario hospitals by Corporate Knight’s found only one had a sustainable procurement policy in place. Even less common in the Canadian health sector is the presence of ethical purchasing standards. For example, considering the working conditions where uniforms and surgical instruments are manufactured, or closer to home, supporting local businesses with sub-contract opportunities for cleaning and maintenance.
Flickr / uberzombie
A comprehensive sustainable purchasing program is an effective way for hospitals to introduce environmental and ethical considerations to their operations. While there are a number of challenges specific to the sector there are many opportunities.
Reeve Consulting is currently working on a project with the Buy Smart Network to assess opportunities and challenges for Health Shared Services B.C., a division of the Provincial Health Services Authority responsible for supply chain logistics and procurement for health authorities in B.C. While our project is in it’s early stages, an initial review of best practices and opportunities has us optimistic about reducing the use of one-time disposable products as well as the high volumes of packaging used in the sector. We’ve also found positive examples to build off of in the realm of ethical purchasing practices, a field that is more developed in Europe (e.g. the British Medical Association’s Medical Fair & Ethical Trade Group). There are also great strides to be made in employee and supplier engagement as well as collaboration within the sector.
We look forward to updating our readers on our results both here on the blog and with related reports on our new website ‘Resources’ page (to be unveiled in coming weeks). Please check back for more information.
Flickr /xelcise
If you pick-up a Cadbury Dairy Milk bar in Canada these days you may notice some changes to the packaging. Since this summer, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk line has been fair trade certified. The wrappers now include an internationally recognized symbol that assures the sugar and cocoa have been purchased from producers paid a fair wage for their crop. Cadbury’s first fair trade bars were released in the UK and Ireland in 2009 and more recently in Canada, Australia and New Zealand in 2010. According to the Cadbury website, going fair trade will quadruple the sales of fair trade cocoa from Ghana and affect over 40,000 cocoa farmers.
The fair trade marketing campaign:
To accompany the release of its fair trade line, Cadbury has unveiled a marketing campaign that invites people to “see the big fair trade picture”. The campaign features print, billboard and online advertising as well as a redesigned website dedicated to the brand (dairymilk.ca). At the centre of the campaign is a series of murals in Toronto and Montreal designed by a Ghanian artist, each of which focuses on a particular benefit of fair trade. The murals fit together like puzzle pieces to present the “big picture”. Themes of the murals include “Improving Local Infrastructure”, “Providing Access to Clean Water”, “Improving Local Health Care” and more. Out-of-home advertising also featured a summer street campaign that invited passersby to sign a petition supporting fair trade in Canada.
Is big business good for fair trade?
This move has brought plenty of attention to Cadbury and has some questioning if big business’ increasing interest in fair trade is good for the sector. On the one hand, more corporations moving some of their buying to fair trade could have a large positive impact worldwide. Further, the greater availability of fair trade certified products could raise awareness among consumers. There’s also the hope that other corporations will note their competitors shift and joins suit, for example Hershey’s or Nestle.
But is it enough for Cadbury to convert one of its lines to fair trade designation? If they’re committed to the tenets of the movement, shouldn’t they be buying fair trade inputs for all their products? It’s a good question. A skeptical view of Cadbury’s fair trade Dairy Milk may lead one to conclude its primarily a marketing stunt; an attempt to improve Cadbury’s public image without a full commitment to sustainability.
It’s a start:
At Reeve Consulting we’re not quick to jump to this conclusion. We support incremental change and from experience realize that broader change takes time. Companies face many challenges in converting their supply chains and in most cases need to start small. An important element for us is that companies acknowledge there are problems beyond those they’re starting with, and that moving forward there’s a plan for these issues to be addressed.
We’re hoping to discuss this further with Cadbury’s Ethical Sourcing Manager this week when we attend the Sustainable Supply Chain Solutions conference in San Francisco. Watch this space for a follow-up post on what we find out. We’ll also be tweeting from the conference at @ReeveConsulting.