Action Sustainability, a social enterprise with a mission to inspire sustainable procurement, has launched a simple online tool aimed at enabling organisations to do a quick self assessment against the requirements of the new standard BS 8903.
The standard, believed to be the world's first for sustainable procurement practice, is presented in three sections
1) fundamentals, which establish the strategic context
2) enablers, which establish the organisational context
3) the procurement process, which describes how the various stages of the procurement process can be done differently.
The tool reflects the standard by asking simple but searching questions and provides a graphic illustration of an organisations status and alignment with the thinking outlined in BS 8903. It is free to use and takes about 10 minutes to complete.
Founding Director of Action Sustainability Shaun McCarthy said "the standard takes sustainable procurement into a new era by making the concept of sustainable procurement real for purchasers. I am very pleased to re-invest some of the modest surplus we have made as a social enterprise to develop this tool and make it available free of charge."
"The standard firmly places the UK at the forefront of best practice, we have had interest from Italy, France, Canada, Australia and Korea as well as the UK"
The tool was designed by Cathy Berry of Action Sustainability, Cathy was lead technical author of the standard and author of an influential book on the subject.
Cathy said; "We first introduced this tool as a hard copy leaflet at our sustainable procurement conference in February 2011. Delegates gave us some great feedback which inspired us to develop an online tool"
But Cathy also sounded a note of caution; "this is a very simple tool to cover a very complex subject. It is intended as a guide to developing a sustainable procurement programme to get an indication of where you are against the standard. It is not a full evaluation."