Enabling Sustainable Procurement
How Solvoz enables Sustainable Procurement
Promotes a more holistic understanding of sustainable procurement
Solvoz’s unique approach and technology allows the creation of solutions that directly incorporate key sustainability considerations within their detailed technical requirements. This approach offers guidance to buying organisations, signals key sustainability requirements to suppliers and fundamentally supports acquisition of effective, contextually- appropriate and sustainable solutions.
Produces vital sustainability knowledge and criteria
Through various collaborative partnerships, Solvoz has produced valuable knowledge resources that promote more sustainable practices to humanitarian procurement. This includes the development of new sustainability frameworks and criteria tailored to our sector. Across the world, organisations have utilised these innovative resources to embed sustainability principles within their procurement processes.
Integrates sustainability into procurement processes
Embeds sustainability criteria within supplier validation
We provide template questionnaires to gather information from suppliers about their environmental and sustainability standards. This approach empowers organisations to directly incorporate sustainability considerations into their RfQ and RfI requests.
Facilitates access to key technical guidance and sustainability expertise
Solvoz’s catalogue of open-access knowledge offers extensive technical guidance within procurement decisions. Our solutions catalogue provides guidance on relevant sustainability criteria, including life cycle management and waste disposal. We also have expert consultants available to assist you in creating your own sustainable procurement strategy and to start making the right procurement decisions to make an impact today.
Empowers local and regional suppliers
Our platform enables local and regional suppliers and service providers to engage more easily with the wider humanitarian sector whilst also enhancing their access to international markets. This promotes the localisation of humanitarian procurement, strengthening local economies and enhancing the sustainability of humanitarian responses.
Sustainability Criteria
Solvoz recognises the importance of sustainable procurement to greening humanitarian responses. Selecting the right products and considering relevant service aspects, such as repairability and recyclability, are essential to minimising waste, prolonging product lifecycles, and mitigating the downstream impacts of procured products.
Building a catalogue of open-access knowledge, including technical guidance within procurement decisions, enables local service providers to engage more easily with the wider humanitarian sector, strengthening the localisation and sustainability of humanitarian procurement.
Quality
Toxicity
End of life management
Recyclability
Repairability
Local production
Case study: Characterising Sustainable Solar Solutions
- A healthy environment is crucial to the safety, security, and wellbeing of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), host communities, and societies.
- UN agencies, INGOs and NGOs have started to mainstream environmental sustainability into their strategies, projects and programmes, and operations; all in line with the environment-related commitments of the SDGs.
- Most refugee and IDP camps lack access to the electricity grid and rely on biomass for energy.
- Humanitarian agencies provide off-grid energy solutions like solar lanterns, streetlights, and home systems to meet energy needs in camps.
- The unregulated discarding of e-waste is amongst the fastest growing waste streams in camps and camp-like settings.
- The humanitarian funding cycle is shorter than the life cycle of procured products. Once devices have been distributed, they are often left to the end-user to maintain and eventually dispose of.
- This can create a risk to human health (e.g., leaking batteries) and the environment (e.g., contamination of groundwater, soil, and air with carcinogenic compounds), negatively impacting long-term development goals.
- In collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM)and Innovation Norway, Solvoz has developed key sustainability criteria for solar lanterns.
- It is recognised that solar lanterns are essential for displaced households, providing basic energy needs and serving multiple functional purposes in displacement settings.
- The work of this partnership recognised that a sustainable lantern must be durable, meet household needs, and have a minimal environmental impact, with a focus on longevity alongside carbon footprint considerations.
- We developed the following key requirements of a sustainable solar lantern
- Matches the lighting need, e.g., to allow children to do homework
- Does not contain toxic materials, e.g., no halogens or toxic heavy metals
- Is of good quality and durable, e.g., can be dropped without easily breaking
- Is repairable, i.e., can be disassembled and parts can be replaced
By integrating these sustainability criteria, our solutions catalogue helps organisations source and procure products that are both functionally effective and environmentally and socially responsible.
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Reach out to us to discover more sustainable options for the products, kits and services you need.