Procurement and the Environment

​All procurement has some level of impact on the environment that needs to be minimised to ensure sustainable procurement practices.

Many environmental impacts occur before a good or service is procured, for example, resource extraction, design development, manufacturing, transportation and storage, etc.
As a large purchasing body, government can minimise the environmental impacts of these frontend procurement activities by influencing supply market practices. Embedded impacts can be included as a criterion in the supplier selection process at the market analysis and market approach stage.

The greatest opportunity to influence environmental outcomes is by selecting products and services with the least ongoing environmental impacts, such as use of water, electricity and fuel, waste/disposal management, and impact on human health over the life of the product or service.
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The following lifecycle stages impact on the environment:

• Raw materials - packaging and distribution
• Manufacture - transportation
• Operation and maintenance - monitoring and evaluation recycle / reuse
• Use - change management
• Disposal - transportation

To reduce your environmental impact, focus on:

• managing unnecessary consumption to reduce waste
• taking a whole of life approach to assessing the extent of environmental impacts
• building environmental considerations into the value for money assessment of a procurement activity
• where appropriate, engaging with suppliers who are committed to better environmental performance

Author - Paul Sedman

Ref: Victoria Government, Reviewed 05 October 2022, vic.gov.au