Member News
8 June 2009
The need to reduce carbon emissions in the process of procurement in order to help save the environment has prompted the Legal Sector Alliance to develop a Sustainable Procurement Guide for law firms.
The Legal Sector Alliance (LSA) is an inclusive movement of law firms and organisations committed to working collaboratively to take action on climate change by reducing their carbon footprint and adopting environmentally sustainable practices. The aim of the LSA is to explore how sustainability considerations complement other key business criteria such as cost, value-for-money and stakeholder preference.
A sustainable approach to procurement means looking at the impacts of the product or service on the environment over its entire lifecycle from creation to disposal.
The LSA guide is designed to help firms consider key sustainability impacts when working with and selecting suppliers. Working with suppliers on environmental sustainability provides the opportunity for both cost and carbon savings. The LSA sustainable procurement focuses on key environmental impacts and reducing carbon emissions in the supply chain.
The guide is designed for smaller LSA member firms who do not have professional procurement departments. It is intended to assist those businesses who delegate procurement responsibility to individuals or other non-dedicated departments. It is intended to inform firms’ existing approach to buying goods and services, not by redesigning the procurement process, but by raising issues to consider along the way.
Nicholas Moore, Principal of Nicholas Moore specialist employment lawyers said: "This guide will help all smaller firms such as ours to ask the really key questions about sustainability in our buying decisions. The amount of carbon emitted in the supply chain process can be very significant. This advice will be invaluable in enabling us all to reduce our environmental impact and at the same time secure useful cost efficiencies”
LSA Chair, Sir Nigel Knowles, said: "LSA members sign up to a set of principles, which commit them to acting on climate change. One of these principles is, 'to work with external stakeholders to reduce our indirect impact', in recognition of the fact that law firms’ most significant impacts are indirect, that suppliers are a key stakeholder and that working with them on environmental sustainability provides the opportunity for both cost and carbon savings. This guide is designed to help firms apply that principle."
The guide has been put together by procurement professionals from LSA member firms Burges Salmon, DLA Piper, Slaughter and May, and Taylor Wessing, who have all built sustainability into their procurement decisions and have experienced some of the benefits and challenges of doing so.
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