Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A lab-equipment tender that awards scoring points for ACT Ecolabel rating and supplier take-back commitments alongside price and performance.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A tender scored on price and lead time alone, with no environmental or supply-chain criteria in the evaluation — ordinary procurement, not sustainable procurement.
Editorial commentary
Sustainable procurement in research extends institutional purchasing policies to laboratory consumables, reagents, instruments, and services. Criteria include supplier climate commitments (CDP scores, science-based targets), product-level certifications (ENERGY STAR, ACT, EPEAT), packaging design, take-back schemes, and reusability. Frameworks such as ISO 20400 provide guidance. In the UK, the NHS Net Zero Supplier Roadmap is a direct precedent that research-intensive universities are adapting. Procurement is typically the largest scope-3 category for research institutions.
How it works in practice
ISO 20400 (guidance, not a certifiable management-system standard) frames sustainable procurement around integrating environmental, social, and governance criteria into every stage of the purchasing process: needs analysis, supplier selection, contract award, and contract management. In a research setting this typically shows up as weighted scoring criteria in equipment and consumables tenders (e.g. product carbon footprint disclosure, ACT Ecolabel rating, take-back/recycling commitments), supplier questionnaires tied to CDP or science-based-target status, and framework agreements that consolidate spend with fewer, more sustainable suppliers to reduce packaging and shipping frequency.
Worked example (illustrative)
Illustrative composite: a university procurement team revises its laboratory equipment tender template to award scoring points for ACT Ecolabel-rated instruments and for supplier-offered end-of-life take-back, alongside the existing price and performance criteria — a concrete instance of ISO 20400’s “criteria beyond price” principle applied to a real purchasing decision, without requiring a parallel certification process for the institution itself.
Counter-example
A tender evaluated on unit price and delivery lead time alone, with no supplier climate or packaging criteria, is conventional procurement, not sustainable procurement — even if the winning supplier happens to have good environmental practices, the absence of the criteria from the evaluation is the distinguishing feature.
Related pages
See also scope 1/2/3 emissions, cold-storage energy, plastic waste in research labs, reusable consumables, and single-use plastic alternatives.
References
- ISO 20400:2017 Sustainable Procurement — Guidance.
- NHS Net Zero Supplier Roadmap.
- My Green Lab ACT Ecolabel (mygreenlab.org) — third-party-verified, EPA-approved product ecolabel used as a procurement criterion.
Also known as
Green procurement (research) · Sustainable purchasing
Machine-readable encodings
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