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Sustainable procurement is the application of sustainable development considerations to spending and investment decisions. At market-level government departments and local authorities can use procurement to advance specific environmental, social and economic agendas, buying solutions that will contribute to community or environmental goals, or to diversity or equality targets. In other cases, sustainability initiatives are driven by the delivery organisation. There are good reasons why service providers might want to offer services or an approach that reflects the social or environmental needs of their client or operating environment. Such an approach helps to maintain a sustainable market for the delivery of similar projects or services in the future, by ensuring that they have a positive impact. A broader application of sustainable procurement comes in the form of cross-governmental initiatives to build sustainable development criteria into public sector commissioning across all areas of spending and investment. In an era when environmental and socio-economic development considerations linked to globalisation and climate change are high on the political agenda, this is an increasingly influential area.
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