Sustainable Procurement: Why Does It Matter?
for a sustainable future
A sustainable future means thinking carefully about what we buy as individuals and organisations. This is even more critical in humanitarian and developmental programmes where the populations served often have limited access to vital goods and services.
Solvoz is enabling humanitarian organisations to integrate sustainability criteria directly into their procurement. Our solutions catalogue provides guidance on relevant sustainability criteria, including life cycle management and waste disposal. We also provide template questionnaires to ask suppliers about their environmental and sustainability criteria. To learn more about this, click here.
Besides recognising the importance of clearly defined sustainability criteria to enhancing sustainable procurement, you can advance many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through your procurement decisions.
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
the need for change
How Solvoz enables system change
Sustainable Procurement Strategy
Solvoz wants to ensure that spending decisions are based on sustainable choices by considering social, economic and environmental impacts.
Sustainable procurement means selecting the right sustainable products and complementary services to minimise waste, extend the life cycle of products, and reduce any final downstream effects of waste disposal from products procured (e.g., considering repairability and recyclability).
Solvoz has created solutions (products and services) that directly incorporate sustainability within their requirements. Providing guidance to buying organisations and signalling key sustainability requirements to suppliers. We 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.
Case study: Sustainable procurement for solar products
A healthy environment is inherently linked to the safety, security and wellbeing of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), host communities and societies. In the last decade, 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 have no access to the electricity grid or energy sources other than biomass. In order to meet the energy needs of camp populations, humanitarian agencies have been supplying off-grid products such as solar lanterns, solar streetlights, and solar home systems. The unregulated discarding of e-waste is among 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 such as solar products have been distributed, they are often left to the end-user to maintain and eventually dispose of. Given that many products are not designed to be repaired, 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). This is negatively impacting long-term development goals.
The Solar Lantern
Solvoz is building sustainability and life-cycle concepts into its solutions catalogue. This helps users to incorporate sustainability directly into their procurement. In collaboration with International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Innovation Norway, Solvoz has developed sustainable criteria for solar lanterns.
The solar lantern is a basic but vital piece of equipment for households in displacement settings. The product can have multiple functional uses when providing for the basic energy needs of households. It is therefore critical that the solar lantern is a sustainable product for displaced communities.
A lantern that matches the needs of the household and lasts a long time is a sustainable product. This is equally as important as the carbon footprint during production. That is why Solvoz is incorporating sustainability criteria into its solutions catalogue.
Lantern key requirements
- Matches the lighting need i.e., to allow children to do homework
- Does not contain toxic materials i.e., no halogens or toxic heavy metals
- Is good quality and durable i.e., can be dropped and not break
- Can be repaired i.e., can be disassembled and parts can be replaced
Sustainable household energy resources
Sustainable construction
Bio-degradable packaging
Clean energy
Localisation
Recycling
reduce the environmental impact of your supply chain Today!
Solvoz recognises the need for sustainable procurement to allow us to green our humanitarian responses. By providing greener procurement practices, we improve the environmental outcomes of humanitarian assistance. Solvoz therefore actively incorporates sustainability into its platform to enable a circular economy and to support the delivery of more responsible and sustainable humanitarian responses.
Various green response actions and solutions are currently being procured for on the Solvoz platform.