In its Third Year, the Sustainable Procurement Pledge Substantially Grows its Impact

The Sustainable Procurement Pledge celebrates the pace of change it has driven through multiple activities and reflects on its foundation in October 2019. Since its ignition, it has introduced numerous initiatives, including the World Sustainable Procurement Day, the launch of the SPP League of Champions, 15 topic, industry, and country-specific Chapters, and the appointment of the first Executive Director, who will shape SPP’s future agenda from the beginning of November. 

Düsseldorf (Germany), October 25, 2022: In the month of its third birthday, the Sustainable Procurement Pledge, a grassroots and bottom-up movement of the global procurement profession, looks back on a very rewarding and impactful period. “When we founded the SPP three years ago, we knew we were setting something great in motion,” says Thomas Udesen, Bayer Chief Procurement Officer and co-founder of the SPP. “However, we would never have dared to dream that we would be able to reflect on such great and rewarding achievements after only three years.”

In the initiative’s third year, its development and growth have accelerated massively. Starting with the first fifteen SPP Chapters, which were kicked off at the end of 2021. SPP Chapters are regional, industry-wide, or topic-specific communities that unite SPP Ambassadors via their shared and central sustainable procurement issue. With the introduction of the SPP Chapters, the initiative brought the SPP Ambassador community closer to each other and to their uniting sustainability issue, as well as accelerating its reach into the procurement profession in multiple directions. SPP Chapters are there to take the high-level intentions of SPP and make them practical and useful in the focus area of the SPP Chapter.

The 2022 calendar started with a landmark global event, the inaugural World Sustainable Procurement Day. Held on the spring equinox of March 21, 2022, the first World Sustainable Procurement Day saw more than 6,500 procurement, supply chain, and sustainability professionals registering to participate in 20 sustainability sessions, featuring 71 speakers from across the world. The range of speakers spanned every level of industry professionals, including perspectives from students and young professionals to those rising through the ranks to Chief Procurement Officers and CEOs who have worked in the profession for many years. The contents of the sessions were equally as diverse, addressing a plethora of topics including, Supplier Diversity, Human Rights Risks in Indirect Spend, Collaboration, Education, Tools to use with Suppliers to address Climate Change, Technology, Modern Slavery, Living Wages, and many more, as well as dedicated industry spotlight session covering Chemicals, Travel & Hospitality, Packaging, and Fashion. International and regional organizations, publishers and communities supported the World Sustainable Procurement Day which was celebrated in many countries and procurement departments all over the world. This great success has spurred SPP to make the second World Sustainable Procurement Day on March 212023, an even more insightful and impactful event.

In June this year, SPP added another layer to its engagement program –  the SPP League of Champions, which was created to help companies engage their procurement teams within the SPP movement and to gradually equip their individual team members with the necessary knowledge, and peer-infrastructure, to deliver on the organization’s sustainability objectives. This latest SPP engagement program has already won the support of a raft of leading businesses, including Accenture, Bayer, CBRE, Colgate Palmolive, GSK, Klöckner Pentaplast, the LEGO Group, Merck, Schneider Electric, Solvay, Tetrapak, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Walgreens Boots Alliance. Together with the SPP Champion companies, SPP is building and sharing tools and knowledge that are then channeled back to the broad SPP Ambassador community.

“We recently conducted the first League of Champions CPO Panel, and it became very obvious that those who have joined SPP have not only recognized for themselves and their respective organizations the importance of sustainability and collaboration but are also committing to it,” says Bertrand Conquéret, Chief Procurement Officer of Henkel and co-founder of the SPP some insights from the first SPP CPO Panel meeting. “Important aspects like climate change and tackling scope 3 emissions, equity and human rights, supply chain transparency, and traceability require collective engagement. And the SPP community is here to develop and provide solutions for the entire procurement profession.”

The SPP will reach another milestone next month with the arrival of the organization’s first Executive Director. To mark SPP’s third birthday, we are also launching a social media challenge called #3forSPP, providing three engagement opportunities to accelerate the impact on Sustainable Procurement practices.   To mark SPP’s third birthday, we are also launching a social media challenge called #3forSPP, providing three engagement opportunities to accelerate the impact on Sustainable Procurement practices – and with a special gift for three SPP Ambassadors!