Sustainable Procurement: Implications for Supply Chains

Reviewing the UK Government's sustainability policy website introduced an interesting development on how it intends to move towards better and more sustainable purchasing practices for the public sector services. A section of the announcement is given here:Published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
© Crown Copyright 2007

UK Sustainable Procurement Action PlanOn 5 March 2007, the UK Government presented a package of actions to deliver the step change needed to ensure that supply chains and public services will be increasingly low carbon, low waste and water efficient, respect biodiversity and deliver wider sustainable development goals.
The UK Government Sustainable Procurement Action Plan will be crucial to achieving the Government's operations targets, which will deliver around 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide savings by 2020.
I found this extremely interesting. A previous post on this site had a degree of relevance for myself, in that both could OR will play a part in integrating the desire for lower energy use (reduced CO2 equivalents) and reductions of environmental impacts from material sourcing. Integrating the principles of: Green Chemistry, Intellectual Property, Supply Chain Processes/Management and InterSpec
In this case, seeing the complementary nature of the objectives of the plan, with the goals of sustainable industry was immediately obvious.
Looking at the text, "The Government’s response to the Task Force and subsequent work with the private sector is intended to make rapid progress in the following key areas:
ii) Effective use of Government procurement power as an enabler to transform the market for innovative and sustainable solutions and make them more widely available and affordable to citizens and corporate buyers;", it seemed to me that there is may not be merely rhetoric, and that indeed substantial progress could be made - to pull or push - (depending on your perspective) clean technology development and utilisation and the introduction of more efficient supply processes development in the public and private sectors. Informatics has an important role to play in bridging the divide, and actually creating the physical "integration". The impacts of this policy document will have to be watched closely.

Some recent literature in Green Chemistry of Interest

Having been away from the blogosphere for a time, some recent interesting articles relating to the development of Green Chemistry and Sustainablity are highlighted here:

Sustainable from the very beginning: rational design of molecules by life cycle engineering as an important approach for green pharmacy and green chemistry
from RSC - Green Chem. latest articles by Klaus Kummerer
Taking into account the full life cycle of chemicals will lead to a different understanding of the full functionality necessary for a chemical. Examples are presented to underline the feasibility and the economic potential of the approach benign by design.Klaus Kummerer
(Paper from Green Chem.)
Klaus Kummerer, Green Chem., 2007, DOI: 10.1039/b618298b
(c) The Royal Society of Chemistry

Integral resource management by exergy analysis for the selection of a separation process in the pharmaceutical industry
from RSC - Green Chem. latest articles by H. Van Langenhove
Overall natural resource intake (MJexergy mol-1) for (2R,3R)-3-(3-methoxyphenyl)-N,N-2-trimethylpentanamine-an intermediate in Tapentadol production-manufacturing and isolation through crystallisation or chromatography has been quantified.J. Dewulf, G. Van der Vorst, W. Aelterman, B. De Witte, H. Vanbaelen, H. Van Langenhove
(Paper from Green Chem.)
J. Dewulf, Green Chem., 2007, DOI: 10.1039/b617505h
(c) The Royal Society of Chemistry

What is a green solvent? A comprehensive framework for the environmental assessment of solvents
from RSC - Green Chem. latest articles by Konrad Hungerbuhler
This article addresses the question of how to measure how "green" a solvent is. We propose a framework that covers major aspects of the environmental performance of solvents over the full life-cycle, and also includes health and safety issues.Christian Capello, Ulrich Fischer, Konrad Hungerbuhler
(Paper from Green Chem.)
Christian Capello, Green Chem., 2007, DOI: 10.1039/b617536h
(c) The Royal Society of Chemistry


Also a recent piece of news in C&EN (ACS) from China on environmental legislation and control:
China Admits Setback
Premier vows country will try harder to meet environmental goalsJean-François Tremblay
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao admitted last week that his country failed in 2006 to meet the environmental emissions and energy efficiency targets that it had set in 2005. But he vowed that China will stick to its medium-term targets for 2010.

QIU JIN/COLORCHINAPHOTO
Wen addresses China's parliament.

Wen was speaking in Beijing at the opening session of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, China's parliament. Facing 3,000 parliamentarians and the world media, his address could not have been more public.
In 2006, China reduced its energy consumption per unit of gross national product by 1.2%, falling far short of the 4.0% target, he said. Instead of coming down 2.0%, emissions of sulfur dioxide increased 1.8%, and chemical oxygen demand, a measure of water pollution, grew by 1.2%.
Under its 11th national five-year plan, which ends in 2010, China aims to reduce its emissions of major pollutants by 10% and to raise its economic energy efficiency by 20%. "Meeting these mandatory targets cannot be revised, so we must work resolutely to meet them," Wen told delegates.
Partly to meet environmental goals, China will try to curb its economic growth to 8.0% in 2007, down from the 10.7% it achieved last year. In addition, the premier said the country will close smaller coal-fired power plants as well as substandard facilities producing cement, aluminum, ferrous alloys, coke, and calcium carbide.
China has difficulty enforcing national environmental standards, because the country operates in a decentralized manner that allows municipal and provincial officials to interpret Beijing's directives in their own way.

China's State Environmental Protection Agency

reports on its website that its outspoken deputy director, Pan Yue, is urging a change in Chinese laws to correct this situation. Arguing that government officials are involved in the most severe cases of environmental violations, he is calling for new rules that would permit the central government to punish officials who fail to enforce national standards.
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Copyright © 2007 American Chemical Society