Project :  Retailer

This retailer was looking to embed social and environmental criteria into its procurement and travel policies. 

There was a traditional mindset of “we aren’t going to sacrifice performance, cost or quality to be more green.” The company wasn’t asking for this to happen, but people couldn’t get past that mindset.

SBC worked with the retailer to:

• Identify opportunities to embed local and sustainable purchasing criteria into RFPs, contracts, and supplier screening requirements
• Develop easy to ask questions across its 8 primary purchasing areas
• Criteria for decision making to make sustainability part, one type of selection criteria, so that people could weigh cost, convenience and sustainability while not sacrificing performance or quality

The company unveiled these procurement policies with training and the reasoning behind it to engage employees and speed adoption.

The company realized over $65,000 in immediate savings just by changing how often it ordered and how it ordered supplies, and improved its RFP score with various customers