1.1 Leveraging strategy

Leveraging your circular economy strategy for procurement

Your purchasing needs have to be approached strategically to begin with. Think about how your needs, and ability to fulfil them, align with your company's circular economy vision and strategy.

Your circular economy strategy on a company level may lead you to decisions such as switching from virgin material suppliers to take-back schemes where you collect materials from your own sales operations. This would influence your business model, require a much longer time frame to implement, and would need the involvement of various stakeholders.

CASE EXAMPLE (TBC)

Having a circular economy strategy in place may make it easier for your procurement team to consider circular purchasing options.

CASE EXAMPLE (TBC)

Process

Chart: Strategic decision making flow

Checklist

• Can you leverage the company’s circular economy strategy (if you have one) to make procurement decisions more circular? (Can you define what full circularity looks like for your company? How does it influence your key sourcing needs?)

• Can you reframe the need and find circular economy opportunities?

• Can you think of alternative sourcing opportunities by finding ways to substitute the virgin inputs?

• At what point do you need to engage other internal and external stakeholders to help make these decisions?