Decarbonisation is a major priority for businesses as the deadline for net zero gets ever closer. As a leading housing association with over 78,000 homes, we have strategies and roadmaps on how we’ll decarbonise our homes, but our supply chain is a key area for improvement. And with over 1,800 suppliers, our complex supply chain has huge bearing on how environmentally sustainable we are as an organisation.
To understand and reduce our environmental impact, we recognise the need to engage with our supply chain. By guiding and supporting suppliers in their own journey towards more sustainable business, we’ll be able to deliver our carbon, plastic, waste and chemical reduction plans and meet our shared environmental objectives and targets.
Embedding sustainable ways of working
Our Sustainable Procurement Principles detail how we ensure the products and services we buy are as sustainable as possible. Putting these into action, our Procurement Team ensure sustainability is assessed at every stage of the procurement process; from planning contracts, to assessing tenders and putting sustainability KPIs in contracts.
At each stage we concentrate on three areas:
• The supplier’s scope 1 & 2 carbon emissions and understanding their carbon reduction plans
• Materials used – understanding what products suppliers are using, where they’re sourced from and how sustainable they are
• Waste – understanding how much waste is produced by type, and what happens to it i.e. how much ends up in landfill.
Measuring performance
Once in contract, to measure how sustainable our suppliers are and support our scope 3 carbon emissions reporting, we designed a specific Sustainability Audit. This means we can easily compare and benchmark suppliers, while also identifying key areas for improvements.
Collaboration and a shared vision is key. We focus on meeting and building relationships with our key suppliers, to support them and gather reliable and consistent data. Initially we’ve engaged with our main maintenance and construction suppliers, as these are the areas of highest carbon emissions.
We support suppliers to provide data under the three areas (carbon, materials and waste), and then work with SHIFT to translate this data into carbon emissions.
We report on the collective sustainability performance of our supply chain in our annual SHIFT submission and ESG report.
On track for a greener supply chain
Building a greener supply chain isn’t without its challenges, but we’ve already seen the benefits of engaging our suppliers.
It has enabled us to share and learn from good practice and given us a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities our supply chain faces.
Strengthening our relationships with suppliers has also enabled us to deliver social value through partnership sustainability projects. For example, on one such project, we’ve worked with Axis to provide a water harvesting system for a community orchard.
Projects like this help increase climate resilience and enhance biodiversity within our communities, both of which provide benefits for residents’ wellbeing too.
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