An article from Supply Chain Management Review lists the French government’s procurement of remanufactured cartridges as an instance of sustainable procurement.
The article highlights three examples of “sustainable procurement” procurement officers “can learn from”, as a positive example of where “governments or businesses have overcome” stigmas around sustainable procurement “effectively”. The example given relating to cartridges was an instance in which the French Ministry of Education “was required to purchase more remanufactured toner cartridges for printers”.
The source for this was a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) study, the article points out, and “the change in the percentage of reused toner cartridges was quite large”, as in 2006 only six percent of cartridges used were remanufactured “as opposed to 40 percent in 2011”. Thanks to this programme, the ministry “was able to buy remanufactured toner cartridges that were 30 to 40 percent cheaper than the conventional alternative”, and hire 25 more staff in the first three years.
Supply Chain Management Review added that the example “points to some interesting takeaways for procurement officers”, including that reused cartridges “were able to meet the demand” required of them, and that cost savings allowed the ministry to “recruit more talent to help with operations relating to and outside of procurement”. With an increase in environmentalism “while reducing costs”, such a move “may help standardise sustainable expectations” in other procurement areas”, the article commented.
The “significant dividends in sustainability and economic returns” gained by the French government body were listed alongside Hong Kong utilising LED traffic light bulbs and German corporation Bayer launching a sustainability programme. In summary, Supply Chain Management Review stated that “sustainability programmes tend to have a large up-front investment with rewards paying off once they are implemented”.
While this can be seen as a “predicament”, those interested in sustainability should “target sustainability programmes that are cheaper or can be implemented over a few years”, it notes, citing the remanufactured cartridges example as one that “developed gradually over three years”. If governments and businesses worked “similarly in stages or over a period of years, [they] may yield significant successes”, and procurement officers “may be given the go ahead to work on larger sustainability projects once some early success is proven”.
Source: http://www.therecycler.com/posts/remanufactured-cartridge-procurement-celebrated-as-sustainable/
