SPP The People Behind The Pledge & Why The Industry Needs To Pay Attention

Over the past couple of years, significant changes in the market, working conditions, unprecedented supply shortages, regulatory adjustments, growing societal awareness, and expectations toward sustainable procurement practices have been driving the importance and recognition of SPP to the top of the agenda.

Hence, we invited SPP to talk to us about their vision, purpose, strategy and, hopes for the future. In this fantastic interview, SPP explains its mission, how partners can join the Pledge, how they stay ahead of regulation and stakeholder sentiment and many other fascinating topics concerning the improvement and direction of a sustainable procurement future.

Image Source: https://spp.earth/

Question: The Sustainable Procurement Pledge was born out of passion for a shared sense of responsibility and commitment to placing sustainability at the heart of the Procurement Profession? How are you meeting this pledge?

SPP: Yes, you are completely right. The Sustainable Procurement Pledge was born out of the passion and will of our two co-founders, Thomas Udesen, Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) at Bayer, and Bertrand Conquéret, Henkel CPO and president of Henkel’s Global Supply Chain B.V. and is FOR Procurement Professionals BY Procurement Professionals. This means we are primarily addressing the individuals in the Procurement profession, not organizations.

Until 2030, we aim to unite 1 million Procurement Professionals under the umbrella of the Sustainable Procurement Pledge, whereof 75% indicate that their procurement decisions were positively influenced by being an SPP Ambassador. To reach this ambitious target, SPP offers different engagement levels:

An engagement level open to anybody is becoming an SPP Ambassador. For this, individuals just need to commit to the five principles of the Pledge on our website www.spp.earth. Until the end of June 2022, more than 7,500 individuals have joined the movement and pledged already.

Another way to shape the future of SPP is either to become a Co-Chair of a country, industry, or focus topic chapter or to join one of our five workstreams that pull the strings in the back office. Currently, we already have 15 SPP Chapters live while others are ramping up their engagement, and 15 volunteers contribute to the SPP office. Thus, SPP has gone from idealism and passion to creating the infrastructure that prepares us for the scale-out. From start-up towards professionalizing, this progress continues to ensure we have funding available, strategies developed for community engagement, and the know-how on the hottest topics.

Question: Now you have explained how individuals can join SPP. Is there also a possibility for companies to become part of the Pledge?

SPP: Yes, or course. Organizations can become part of SPP by joining the League of Champions. The SPP Champions concept was created to help companies engage their procurement teams within the SPP movement and to equip their individual team members with the necessary knowledge gradually, and peer-infrastructure to deliver on the organization’s sustainability objectives. In numerous conversations with leading CPOs, we recognized a strong desire to collaborate across organizations and to involve the entire Procurement team in the SPP. At the same time, we recognize that we can only achieve our growth goal of welcoming 1 million Procurement Professionals as SPP Ambassadors by 2030 if we develop scalable engagement programs. That is how the idea of SPP Champions was born. We are super excited that the new program has already won the support of a raft of leading businesses, including Accenture, GSK, the LEGO Group, Merck, Schneider Electric, Solvay, Tetra Pak, and Walgreens Boots Alliance, who have become SPP’s first Champions. SPP Champions provide an annual donation, thereby creating the financial foundation that enables the deployment of SPP’s strategy and the formation of the SPP Office. SPP Champions receive additional support to access a wide range of resources and community engagement opportunities developed for global Procurement professionals across multiple sectors and countries. SPP Champions also benefit from bespoke support from the SPP Steering Team volunteers

Question: How does collaboration on sustainable objectives help you to stay ahead of changes in regulation and stakeholder sentiment?

SPP: Unlike many other sustainability initiatives, SPP is a bottom-up, grassroots movement targeting the individual Procurement Professionals, not sustainability professionals or corporates. SPP empowers and equips practitioners with the knowledge and tools they need to make responsible purchasing decisions. Therefore, our strategy is built on the pillars of Empower & Equip and Enable Leadership. Regulatory changes and stakeholder expectations are aspects that are considered in the capacities that we have been building up within the SPP community with the support of SPP Workstreams and Chapters, such as social and environmental aspects addressed by different stakeholders. And as regulations and stakeholder expectations evolve, so does the SPP community.

Question: What steps can be taken towards a sustainable supply chain when establishing new partnerships?

SPP: One of the first SPP Challenges, a format we introduced to address key sustainability questions concerning Procurement Professionals, was “How to get started?”. In this challenge, we curated top-notch, target group specific contents that enable Procurement Professionals to start their individual Responsible Sourcing Journey. Complementary SPP Challenges addressed related questions that need to be tackled in addition, such as “How to promote organizational change” and “Do’s and Don’ts of promoting sustainability projects”. All these key questions, or – how we call them – challenges and the answers to them are publicly available on https://spp.earth/challenges/ and support our SPP Ambassadors to make progress on their individual responsible sourcing journey

Question: Can you share an example of how you have accelerated a positive impact or ESG goal through collaboration?

SPP is all about generating and accelerating positive impact on sustainable supply chains. Our two strategic pillars of Empower & Equip and Encourage Leadership form the basis of our focus and activities across the globe to engage and support procurement professionals at any career level – from intern to CPO – so we can grow together as a powerful movement with lasting impact. The impact target we aim for is that at least 75% of all SPP Ambassadors indicate that they are making more responsible sourcing decisions because of their commitment to the Pledge. As SPP is a grassroots, bottom-up movement, our call to action states, “Impact starts with ‘I’” which translates into the meaning of “Be the Change You Want to See in the World”. SPP goes deep and wide. Our five core principles refer to the UN Global Compact and embrace all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Every year, we conduct a Pulse Check survey among the SPP Ambassadors to see where we are regarding our Impact KPI. This year, we partnered with Gartner for the first time to run the survey. The fantastic news is that again 71% of the SPP Ambassador community confirmed that they feel making more sustainable sourcing decisions because of SPP, and 76% are encouraged to take positive actions.