Adopting The Sustainable Supply Chain Pathway

I'm Siôn. I work in the University of Edinburgh's Department for Social Responsibility and sustainability. And my role is to support our procurement to embed sustainability, in particular environmental sustainability. I'm going to hand over to my colleague, Iwona to introduce herself and then to Stuart as well. Iwona, over to you. I'm Iwona Cameron. I'm the senior Climate, Biodiversity and Sustainability Manager at University of Edinburgh, and I work with Siôn on the environmental impact of university operation, looking to reduce the impact of our operations as a whole. And I'll pass the Stuart just now. Thanks, Iwona. Hi, everyone. I'm Stuart Linton. I am the contract and supply management specialist here in the strategic procurement team. I typically work within the labs category, and my role is to make sure that what suppliers agree to as part of our contracts and frameworks is delivered, and one of the key areas that a couple of the key areas that we're doing that is across sustainability, but also social responsibility to. Thank you. And yeah, the aim of today really is to talk through the Edinburgh pathway and then time for Q&A at the end. So any questions that you have, please put them into the Q&A tab. And we'll collate those and answer those as we go through. And it might be myself, Iwona or Stuart that answer, depending on who we feel is most relevant to that topic. If we can't answer it today, then we'll get back to you subsequently with the response to those questions if it needs some input from somebody else around the university. Otherwise, we'll get started with the presentation. Now, I'm told reliably that you can see a presentation, which is excellent. It's a good start. And, what we'll cover, I said, is to talk through very quickly our approach to responsible procurement at the University overall, to give you a flavour of what that means for us. We'll then look at how and why we've developed the Edinburgh pathway. And I'm going into the nuts and bolts of what the Edinburgh pathway looks like, and in particular, what it means for existing supplies, but also for our future supply chain as well going forward over the next few years. To give you an indication of the university overall, we are a fairly large university within the UK further and higher education sector. As you can see there we have about around 50,000 students and somewhere in the region of 16,000 - 17,000 FT staff. Our annual non-pay spend is somewhere 350-450 million, and we have many, many thousands of suppliers across all categories of spend. So we are a significant spend within the supply chain, really, certainly within the Edinburgh region. And within this, when we look at responsible procurement, this is the definition that we developed within the Department for Social Responsibility, sustainability and Procurement. And this is available on the university's website. And as you can see there, it talks about sourcing goods, services, and works as well that takes into account ethical and sustainability considerations. And what we mean by ethical and sustainable in this instance is the environmental impact of goods, services and works, which could be the carbon impact, the climate change impact or biodiversity, the impact of novel entities and chemical pollution and so on and so forth. It's also the opportunities we have to promote human rights within the supply chain and to minimise or remove modern slavery and other negative impacts of human rights within those supply chains. Both directly, say within the UK through implementing things such as Fair Work First, but also all the way through our supply chains, wherever they may lead us across the globe. And the final area that we do look at as well within the topic of responsible procurement is the potential we have to enhance local social value through the delivery of community benefits. And the work we're talking about today really focuses on the first area there, which is that environmental impact. And in particular, it's around carbon emissions and climate change. And where this fits within the broader university context and strategies is the University of Einburgh's procurement strategy, which was released, and Stuart can correct me if I'm wrong, at the very end of last year, so 2024, about a year ago now. And it's publicly available on our website. And when you look at this strategy, you'll see that it's very heavily focused around the key themes that I've mentioned there around environmental sustainability and social impact as well. The work I'm talking to very much fits into what the University is looking to achieve across the wider piece as well. And the reason we are focused on emissions and in particular, carbon emissions in the first instance over the Edinburgh pathway is really highlighted in this graph here. This is, again, publicly available on the website on the Social Responsibility  and Sustainability (SRS) website, and it shows our breakdown of emissions for the 2023 to 2024 financial year for the university, which is our academic year. And you can see that on the right hand side there, the purple is our purchase goods, services, and works. Everything that we procure on behalf of the university, and that accounts for about 58% of our total emissions. This is the slice of the pie that we're really looking to address and to drive down and decarbonize where we can. When we look at this in a little more detail, and this is, again, is information that's available through our public bodies, climate change duties Reporting (PBCCD), is that it is across all as spend areas. Labs is the highest in this year, but it is across our estates, our information services, our professional services as well. And the subcategories you see there are just some of those that we are aware of where we are higher impact carbon emissions or are higher carbon emitters as a sector. They are the areas we may well be focusing on slightly more going forward. In terms of the wider context for us as an institution and our supply chain as well, I'll not go into this in too much detail, but just to highlight that in terms of national legislation, obviously, it depends on where you are in the UK. But for us in Edinburgh, we are governed by Scottish Government and we have the climate emissions reduction target, Scotland bill, whereas the rest of the UK has the Climate Change Act. And then from that, we then have the Procurement Act or Procurement reform Scotland act, again, depending on where you are in the UK. So we're bound by legislation to do our best to remove to address climate change and carbon emissions. And that procurement plays a really key part to that. In terms of our sector, we have a concordat for the environmental sustainability of Research and Innovation Practise, which the University of Edinburgh signed up to. And this is a concordat developed in conjunction with our funding bodies and other FHE (Further and Higher Education) institutions and other collaborators and partners. And within this, it sets out how we look to make our research more sustainable. And one of the six key themes here is sustainable procurement. Again, looking at the things that we buy within our research practise, how can we make that more sustainable and what does sustainability mean in that context? Now the next slide I'll show you is also what other sectors are doing. So some of you on the call may well already be aware of the NHS England's net zero roadmap for suppliers. And the work that we'll talk through today aligns closely to this work. It builds on their work because we see the value in this sort of approach in signalling to the market what we need to be working on together. But hopefully we'll see as we go through that what I said, we're building on it as well. And then in terms of organisational comments, I've already mentioned our procurement strategy at the university. We also have a climate strategy, net zero by 2040. And that within there, it talks through how we look to become net zero by 2040 a few years ahead of our Scottish government target, but we see this as important and to be aligned more closely with the science and to get there more closely where we can. And again, just to highlight the piece of work that we're talking about today, the Edinburgh pathway sits in that red box there, which is to look at how we support our suppliers, achieve a 1.5 degree aligned science aligned pathway. In terms of the outcomes of the Edinburgh pathway for ourselves and for our supply chain, what I hope comes across today is that we're really looking to provide a clear signal of intent to our supply chain and where we need to get to as an organisation, as an institution, but also because of that, where we need to take our suppliers on the same journey with us and how we're going to get there as well. We do see real benefits are that it should increase the resource efficiencies for us as an institution, but also for our direct suppliers and their supply chains as well. And I'll talk a lot more about that in later slides. And that really drives the mutually beneficial opportunities that I do see available in particular for our suppliers that are willing to work with us on this and are progressing on the Edinburgh pathway further as we go through. And those national sectoral and organisational targets, you will have your own organisational targets for net zero in many instances and other sustainability areas. Saying the Edinburgh pathway is very much aligned and support those. So where you're being asked to do it externally, being able to demonstrate the Edinburgh pathway steps that you're taking will really put you in good stead, I believe, for those and whether you're based in Scotland, whether you're based across the rest of the UK as well. I did share a briefing document with you, and that does show you the Edinburgh Pathway, and we'll talk through it in a little more detail in these next steps. So this is the Edinburgh Pathway, main graphic, if you like. And there are and I'll talk to them in more detail as we go through, but there are supplementary documentation as well that support these further details of these steps and actions for us. And for yourselves. So the key points I want to highlight here though, is that there are four key strands, three for our supply chain that we are looking to implement. The first of those is commitment action. Then you have data and reporting and monitoring. But there's also embedding for us as an organisation that we need to embed responsible procurement more broadly so that we can come to our supply chain and make that request of you. So you know that as and when you become more sustainable and you decarbonize, you'll be asked these questions and essentially score better and have better opportunities to work with us and to provide your good services and works to the university as well. The second area to look at is the timescales that we acknowledge that it's a tight timescale to work to, and that's because of the urgent climate emergency that we find ourselves in. Without urgent action, we're very likely to miss the 2030 interim targets that are set within the science aligned targets. So we really have to be working hard over the next few years to realign ourselves as best we can with those targets, acknowledging if we overshoot and we're still doing as much as we can, then that's okay as long as we try and then rein it back at that 2030 threshold as well. But that's, as you can see, there are actions for us as an organisation and for our supply chain that we will be looking to implement at this time. And these actions are stepped, so they build on the years previously as well. So it's not that we'd expect everybody in 2025 to do all of the actions all the way through, but to build up over the next few years and to develop alongside us as an institution. And the final point on this slide is to highlight that all the steps are proportional to the impact of specific procurements. So the groups we've invited today include the top tier, and I'll talk about tiering in a second, organisations that fit into that top tier. But it also includes organisations that don't. And we're really keen to stress that we want to keep working with all the suppliers that we currently work with, and that the end pathway will focus on a smaller subset initially as we build it up. And those that are considered lower impact in sustainability terms will have an extension of around two years to be able to enact the steps that will be required for them going forward as well. In terms of the tiering I mentioned, this is the approach that we're taking over the next few years in terms of the supplies we'll be looking to approach. The first tier over the next year to two is what will account for the roughly 60% of our supply chain emissions. The following two years we'll be looking at the top 75%, and then to 2030, it's the top 85%. And that is, for us, what we feel is achievable and acknowledging that, for example, those in the highest impact categories will have supply chains themselves that maybe fit into some of these other areas as well, lower down a tiering systems, so there'll be a trickle down effect in some of the actions that we see. I'm now talk a little more detail about the three key strands for suppliers, and I'll go on to the one for us as a buying organisation at the end. But I already mentioned that there are documents available. So we have implementation guidance for suppliers, which details the actions to be taken and what that looks like, as well as some of the support that we can offer as an institution for suppliers that go along this journey. And we will provide that to suppliers as we ask them to adopt the pathway alongside us. So again, that document isn't publicly available, but we will share as and when required to help suppliers make informed decisions on this. And each of these, as I say, has a set of actions, and each of those actions then has detail within it on how to achieve the specific step set out. There's also one of these for us as a buying organisation so that we can hold ourselves to account. And also, I should have mentioned earlier, actually, is the approach that we have here, although we're starting at the University of Edinburgh, we are in discussions with a number of other further and higher education institutions as well as wider public bodies on how to best, to collaborate and adopt this more widely so that the ask of suppliers is uniform across different organisations. And it means that you can spend less time  answering slightly different questions and more time on the actions that you need to take to decarbonize and to work with us on that. So I'll talk more about the benefits as we see them in a few slides time. So the first strand for supper is commitment and action. And these are really designed to gain that early public commitment from organisations from our suppliers, that they are committed to these actions across the whole Edinburgh Pathway, but then give time to develop a realistic target for them and their sector and the action plan, the SMART action plan that is deliverable that achieves this. So actions within this strand could include that they publish a commitment aligning to the steps out in the end of a pathway. They then develop a science, aligned carbon emission reduction targets specific to their sector. And again, we can signposts to resources that might be able to support suppliers that need extra support on that. And then the action plans developed are discussed in contract management meetings. And we know that contract management meetings aren't just down to suppliers. They're very much down to us as a buyer as well to instigate to manage those and to direct those. Again, it's a two way conversation on those elements. The next strand is around data, and the steps you see here are really designed to build up the data maturity so that by 2028, we're more able to make informed decisions on the products that we purchase. We know that not all products will be able to have by 2028 product product product specific carbon emission data, just with the level of data maturity that's around in certain sectors and certain supply chains. But what we would look to do is see how far along that journey we can get for a range of the highest, volume products that we purchase or the highest impact products that we purchase as an institution. But what we would look to do is start by moving away from where we are at the minute, which is very much on a spend based approach to being able to gather more broadly organisational level carbon emission data across all three scopes and having a better understanding of what data supplies are able to collect already and where the data maturity isn't sufficient, and it's based on other less accurate data. And then the other areas within this data strand, some of the actions might be to support adopting institutions such as ourselves to make carbon emission data and other sustainability metrics visible in our own purchasing systems or through punch out catalogues or other sort of on quotes or invoices as well. So again, coming back to that point and being able to make an informed decision that our buyers have that information alongside all the other pieces of technical and quality data that they might be required to make a decision on what items to purchase. The final strand for suppliers is our reporting and monitoring. And this is very much on working out where suppliers have progressed and have exceeded expectations in some instances and celebrating those successes and highlighting those best practises within the sector and across those buying organisations that are adopting the Edinburgh Pathway, but also to address the challenges where the targets aren't met. And that might be signposting to new resources or looking at how we can support suppliers through that and what that looks like is entirely up for debate and depending on the individual supplier and that relationship and where we're up to on the action plan. But that all comes out of that contract management meeting and being able to discuss this more openly as we go through. In terms of the university, we have the three steps that are in the embedding. And this really looks to achieve the ask that by 2028, our buying community will have the knowledge, skills, and tools to recognise and request key responsible procurement themes. So this is us saying as an institution, we need to improve our buyers understanding of what we mean by responsible procurement, how to procure responsibly so that they when they are going out to market, when they're going out to look at products and different options, that they can do that, acknowledging, all the challenges that might come alongside that. We'll be using this to listen to our buyers to establish what resources will be required or be of benefits to those and be able to share those. And again, working alongside other institutions, it's very much how do we develop shared resources that we can all use and support each other in that sense as well. I've touched briefly on the collaboration piece in this. I do very much see the Edinburgh Pathway as a collaboration between ourselves as a buyer or buying organisation and all of the buying community we have at the university, whether it's those that hold the budget, whether those make decisions, our requisitioners, those that support development of contracts through our strategic procurement team, the ops team, or contract management team, the Stuart is part of as well, and ourselves from a sustainability perspective. But it's also a collaboration with other institutions as well. So talking through some of these, the resource hubs that's mentioned there, I see there's an opportunity to have a resource hub dedicated for suppliers to be able to view the existing tools and webinars that are already out there in a centralised location, that means that they can progress the actions that are needed or being required of them through this pathway. One of the really strong areas, I think, for opportunities is the research opportunity. Within the University of Einburgh, we have 4,000 academic staff and give or take 50,000 students. If you multiply that or extrapolate, that across the whole of the UK FHE sector. That's a huge body of research and learning opportunities which we could utilise to support suppliers, to work towards the actions that they needed within their action plan. So we have an approach at the university called the Living Lab approach, where we use universities data and systems and processes as test beds for student projects. There's no reason we couldn't expand or extend that to suppliers that are willing to work with us in that space. And obviously, that benefits us as an institution because it provides opportunities, real life opportunities for our students to see what it's like to work in industry. As well as helps us to decarbonize our supply chain. But it helps you as an organisation as well to move alongside that and better understand potentially your carbon impacts and where you can make real change. Training and support is the same, coming back to the courses that we offer and how we could potentially roll out some of those courses, offer those courses to some suppliers willing to work with us on the pathway. And then on the bottom, we have the standardised ask When we come together as a group of buying organisations, we're asking the same questions of you. So you know in advance what sort of detail you'll be required to provide or to what standards you're expected to meet so you can spend less time answering slightly different questions in a tender across different institutions and work to realise the actions within an action plan and demonstrate those more clearly within those responses as well. And streamline reporting. We're very aware that institutions organisations, suppliers, ourselves as a public body as well have many different tools that we're required to fill in in reporting terms. We want to streamline that where we can so that you're providing one set of data that can be shared across multiple institutions, which means that again, you're not spending a lot of time filling in, reporting in slightly different formats and you can focus more on the work that you would like to get done. And that sharing best practise and open dialogue is really important, as I hope you're taking away from this, that we really do want an open dialogue with our suppliers that want to work with us on this, and it's very much a two way conversation. We don't want this to be seen as mandating something or not listening to our supply chain, and it's the same internally as well. We are working with our buyers to help them understand what we mean by responsible procurement. And we know that across our supply chain, there will be suppliers that are far exceeding where we need them to be, which is fantastic, and there'll be others that need help a helping hand to get there. So it's about understanding that difference as well. And then what does this mean for our suppliers? Again, hopefully you're taking that away from today is that we really want an open dialogue on how we can embed sustainability and social value into our purchasing. We do really see the opportunities to work together to tackle our collective impact on climate change. But given the resource implication and the size of the supply chain that we have, we are very much taking a tiered approach to make best use of our resources. So if you're a supplier and you don't hear about the Edinburgh Pathway, you're not asked to adopt it initially, don't think that that doesn't mean we don't want to work with you anymore. It just means we haven't quite got to you just yet. But if you're also a supplier that looks at the Edinburgh Pathway and says, I'm already doing all this as a supplier, sign me up, then we can work with you on that as well, even if we haven't approached you initially. So depending on where you sit, definitely do view it in that context. And I believe one of the final slides you'll probably be pleased to hear is around the resources we have. If you haven't viewed it already, we have a website, publicly available website for the Edinburgh Pathway, which is available through short link edin.ac/pathway And that includes all the up to date information on the pathway, including documentation. We're more than happy to come out and give presentations to sectors or to groups, similar to today where we've invited a wider range of stakeholders and suppliers directly. We've already shared the overview documents are on the right hand side that is already shared via the website, and the implementation guidance below that is the one that I mentioned, which will be shared directly with suppliers as we ask them to adopt the Edinburgh pathway. The next slide is my contact details and an open opportunity for any questions that have come up. Iwona who's sitting next to me, will be reading them out and we'll try and answer them as best we can. As I said at the start, if we don't get to any of those questions or can't quite figure out the answer today, then we'll get back to you in written form. Or if it needs more than that, we can look at arranging a dedicated meeting for it specifically. I should also say this has been recorded, so we will be slicing the presentation part of this and putting it up onto the website as well for wider distribution. But the Q&A section, we'll probably take it offline and put it into an FAQ style document as and where appropriate. Which case, what I'll do as I say, we will pop the recording of this onto the website so that you can go back and review it. My contact details are on there as well and we'll share those. Yes, there'll be a very short question survey alongside this. But if you do have further questions, further comments on the pathway based on the documents you've received in advance, the information on the website or this webinar, then do feel free to reach out to myself to Iwona or to Stuart as well to ask those questions. I hope you take away from today that it's very much a two way conversation on this with our supply chain. Otherwise, unless there's anything you'd like to add, Stuart as well, you can come on and say your goodbyes. But thank you very much for joining us today. Really appreciate your time. I know everybody's busy, especially in the run up to Christmas. So thank you very much and enjoy the rest of your days. Thank you.