Sustainable Procurement is a ―process of acquiring goods, works and services from a supplier that provides the optimum combination of whole life costs and benefits to meet the customer‘s requirements. It is a process whereby organisations meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves value for money on a whole life basis in terms of generating
benefits not only to the organization, but also to society and the economy, while minimizing damage to the environment.
Sustainable procurement builds on the traditional procurement practice which it seeks to extend through the adoption of sustainability principles. Procurement is defined as acquisition of goods, works and/or services from the supplier (this may be an individual or organization). The procurement process is viewed as involving sourcing (planning: needs identification and
assessment, supplier selection) contracting, monitoring and evaluation, and expediting; Sustainable procurement means taking into account economic, environmental and social impacts in buying choices. This includes optimizing price, quality, availability …but also environmental life-cycle impact and social impacts linked to product/service‘s origin.
