How to get started with sustainable procurement: a guide for SMEs

Posted 12/10/2026

Sustainable procurement is a practical way to reduce risk, cut costs and build resilience across your organisation. With increasing pressure to understand supply chains and reduce Scope 3 emissions, it’s an area every organisation should be looking at but many are unsure where to start.

In this guide, we’ll draw on insights from our Greening your Procurement webinar. From engaging your suppliers to putting simple policies in place, we’ll share practical actions alongside real examples from organisations including VetPartners, Swinton Estate and Ecology Building Society.

What is sustainable procurement (and why does it matter)?

Sustainable Procurement covers more than just choosing better products for the environment. It means making informed decisions about the goods and services your organisation buys, so they support environmental, social, and economic goals. Areas of your existing procurement that should be reviewed are:

Environmental impact e.g. carbon emissions, waste, resource use
Social impact e.g. labour standards, community benefits
Governance e.g. transparency, ethical sourcing
Economic value e.g. cost, resilience, long term value

Importantly, procurement often sits at the heart of your organisation’s Scope 3 emissions, meaning the indirect impact of what you buy can be one of your biggest environmental hotspots.

Why it matters for SMEs and growing organisations

Putting greener procurement practices in place early makes it easier for employees to adopt them into everyday decision making. It helps build consistency across your organisation and avoids the need for more complex changes later on.

Sustainable procurement can also:

Reduce environmental impacts across your operations and supply chain
Strengthen supplier relationships through collaboration and shared goals
Improve resilience against rising costs and supply chain disruption
Demonstrate a credible commitment to sustainability to clients, partners and stakeholders

Step 1: Start with what you already buy

Before setting targets or making changes, start by understanding what you’re already doing. This will be your baseline and will help you to pinpoint what areas could make an impact. Look at what you’re buying, who you’re buying from (and their environmental commitments), and where your highest spend or impact sits.

You can begin by reviewing spend reports or invoices, identifying key suppliers and categories, and focusing on areas with the greatest potential impact.

In some cases, organisations have also found that reviewing waste more closely leads to immediate improvements. By understanding what is being thrown away, it becomes easier to identify unnecessary purchases or areas where materials could be used more efficiently.

Step 2: Put a simple sustainable procurement policy in place

A sustainable procurement policy does not have to be complex or time consuming. In many cases a short, simple document is enough to outline your organisation’s intent and help guide better decision making.

At its core, your policy should answer a few key questions:

What are you trying to improve? (e.g. reducing waste, lowering emissions, supporting local suppliers)
What does this mean for purchasing decisions across your organisation?
What expectations do you have of your suppliers?

How to write a sustainable procurement policy

For SMEs and growing organisations, it’s important your policy reflects where you are now, not where you think you should be.

Start with:

A clear statement of intent
A small number of priority areas
Simple guidance for staff making purchasing decisions

How to communicate a procurement policy change

Sharing the written policy with your teams in a simple, accessible format is a good starting point. From there, linking it to existing processes such as purchasing approvals, supplier selection or contract reviews helps to embed it into everyday practice.

Step 3: Engaging suppliers

As expectations around supply chains and Scope 3 emissions increase, understanding who you buy from is becoming increasingly important. Asking about a supplier’s current approach, or sharing what your organisation is trying to achieve, helps build a shared understanding and sets expectations over time.

At Swinton Estate, this was approached through regular, informal conversations rather than immediate requirements. Their iiE case study highlights a wider focus on identifying key stakeholders and building communication around them, recognising that engaging external stakeholders such as suppliers and customers is important to embedding sustainability more widely. To support this, Swinton Estate ran a supplier survey and introduced a procurement charter, helping make sustainability a more consistent part of supplier conversations.

Suppliers will be at different stages in their sustainability journey. For some, sharing detailed data or formal commitments may be straightforward. For others, particularly smaller organisations, a more proportionate approach may be needed. As Kelly Forster, Senior Sustainability Manager at VetPartners explains:

“We have to take a proportionate approach […] some of our smaller suppliers won’t have the same level of data or resources, so it’s about supporting them rather than expecting everything at once.”

Taking this approach helps keep expectations realistic and encourages suppliers to engage, rather than creating unnecessary barriers.

Step 4: Take action

Greening your procurement is a marathon, not a sprint. Start by focusing on small, achievable challenges. Step back and question existing habits, in many cases, the most sustainable option is simply to avoid buying something in the first place.

At Ecology Building Society, this approach helped identify opportunities to reduce both cost and environmental impact. Rather than purchasing new furniture to meet a request for more workspace, the team rearranged existing items within the building, achieving the same outcome without any additional spend.

This kind of thinking can be applied across a wide range of procurement decisions. Reviewing how often deliveries are made, for example, can highlight opportunities to consolidate orders and reduce transport emissions. Similarly, small changes to products, such as choosing reusable or lower-waste alternatives, can add up.

Step 5: Measure progress to keep improving

Regular reviews help identify what is working well, where further action is needed, and where there may be opportunities to go further. It also makes it easier to communicate progress internally and keep teams engaged.

At this stage, it’s less about having perfect data and more about developing a clearer picture of your progress. This might include looking at:

Changes in purchasing habits (e.g. reducing unnecessary purchases or switching to lower-impact products)
Levels of supplier engagement (e.g. the proportion of suppliers who are sharing sustainability data or committing to improvement)
Cost savings (e.g. reducing spend through delivery consolidation, reuse, or avoiding unnecessary purchases)
Reductions in waste (e.g. fewer deliveries, improved waste segregation, or less single-use material entering your site)

As your confidence grows, you may choose to set more defined targets, gather more detailed data, or take a deeper look at higher-impact areas of your supply chain.

FAQs

What is sustainable procurement?

Sustainable procurement means considering environmental, social and economic factors when buying goods and services, rather than focusing on cost alone. It helps organisations make purchasing decisions that support long term resilience and lower environmental impact.

Why is sustainable procurement important?

Sustainable procurement can help organisations reduce environmental impact, strengthen supplier relationships, improve resilience against rising costs and supply disruption, and demonstrate a credible commitment to sustainability. It is becoming increasingly important as organisations are expected to better understand their supply chains and Scope 3 emissions.

How to get started with sustainable procurement

A good starting point is to understand what you buy, who you buy from and where your biggest impacts sit. From there, you can set a simple direction, start conversations with suppliers and focus on small, practical improvements.

Do small organisations need a sustainable procurement policy?

Yes, but it doesn’t need to be complicated. For SMEs and growing organisations, a short, practical policy can help set priorities, guide purchasing decisions and create more consistency across teams.

Do you need to change suppliers to make procurement more sustainable?

Not necessarily. Many organisations start by working more closely with their existing suppliers, understanding what they are already doing and setting clearer expectations over time. Swinton Estate’s approach also shows that supplier engagement can begin with conversation and develop into more structured tools such as a supplier survey or procurement charter.

Is sustainable procurement expensive?

Not always. In many cases, it can reduce costs through smarter sourcing, fewer unnecessary purchases, lower waste and more efficient delivery patterns.

How does sustainable procurement link to Scope 3 emissions?

For many organisations, a significant share of Scope 3 emissions comes from purchased goods and services. That is why understanding what you buy, who you buy from and how suppliers operate is becoming a more important part of sustainability planning.

Interested in greening your procurement? iiE is a not-for-profit sustainability accreditation scheme for organisations of all sizes across the UK. For a friendly conversation and practical tips on how to get started, email [email protected].