What is Sustainable Sourcing?

Sustainable sourcing is the integration of social and environmental factors into the selection process for suppliers. The long-term goal of sustainability sourcing is to build lasting supplier relationships, and at the same time improving upon environmental and social goals as a core corporate objective.

The key to moving toward sustainable sourcing is to not embrace every aspect of sustainability in one go, but to include one aspect at a time and then another. And during that process, the company can build sustainability metrics and go on adding to its approved list of sustainable suppliers. A simple scoring system is often helpful, more so if those aspects are reflected within a company’s procurement and sourcing transaction system.