The Circular Future - A Quantum Lifecycle Partners podcast
Welcome to the Circular Future – a podcast that facetimes you with the challenges of e-waste and its impact on the world. Join Stephanie McLarty, Head of Sustainability at Quantum Lifecycle Partners, as she interviews industry thinktanks who share their insights on the trends in reuse and recycling of technology. This podcast is for you if you are responsible for managing your company’s electronics or are simply curious about all things e-waste, sustainability, carbon emissions, data security and more. Each episode finishes with actionable advice for business managers and leaders to do their part in helping build a circular future.
The Circular Future - A Quantum Lifecycle Partners podcast
51. Sustainable Procurement: A Net Zero Strategy
In this conversation, Stephanie McLarty and Bob Willard delve into the concept of sustainable procurement, exploring its definition, importance, and implementation strategies. Bob shares his extensive experience in sustainability and emphasizes the need for organizations to engage suppliers in their sustainability goals. The discussion covers various aspects of sustainable procurement, including the significance of circularity, the tools available for implementation, and the innovative 'signal, prefer, require' framework. Bob also provides practical advice for organizations looking to adopt sustainable practices, highlighting the interconnectedness of sustainability and business success.
Takeaways
- Sustainable procurement is about getting best value for money.
- Companies must engage suppliers to meet sustainability goals.
- Sustainable procurement can lead to cost savings.
- Tools and resources are available to aid sustainable procurement.
- Circularity is essential for reducing carbon footprints.
- Meeting organizational priorities is key to promoting sustainability.
- Sustainability initiatives can enhance business resilience.
- Connecting sustainability to existing goals is crucial for success.
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One of the biggest ways to make a difference is to vote with your wallet. So how can companies buy better for a more sustainable future? Welcome to the Circular Future, your access to thought leaders and innovations to help you be a business sustainability champion, even if it's not your core job. I'm your host, stephanie McLarty, head of Sustainability at Quantum Lifecycle Partners, where we close the loop for electronics. The truth is, if we keep buying the same stuff in the same way as we always have, we will get the same result. It reminds me of a definition of insanity. So today we're unpacking sustainable procurement and how companies can implement it. With me is Bob Willard, founder and chief sustainability champion at Sustainability Advantage. Bob is a leading expert on sustainability justifications, reporting frameworks and sustainable procurement. Over the last 23 years he has given over 1,800 presentations, has authored six books and published two white papers, and I know you've been on many podcasts as well. We're fortunate to have him here, as I would personally describe Bob as a legend in our space. So welcome to the podcast, bob.
Speaker 2:Wow, what a generous introduction. Thanks a lot. Looking forward to this.
Speaker 1:Well, we really appreciate having you here to share your wisdom and all of your expertise. So, Bob, I know there'll be a lot of listeners who might be familiar with you. There may be some who aren't. So let's start with our first question, which is what would be three things that the world wouldn't necessarily know about the work that you do at Sustainability Advantage?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, I am Sustainability Advantage. I'm just a sole proprietor, so what you're looking at is the whole organization.
Speaker 1:Amazing.
Speaker 2:A couple of things. Most people know that I had a previous life in IBM. I worked for IBM Canada for 34 years and people assumed that I was doing something to do with sustainability or procurement in my time at IBM and I had nothing to do with those things. I was in marketing, I was in leadership development, I was in management at various levels in the organization, product support, etc. Management and various levels in the organization, product support, et cetera. From a procurement point of view, I was on the supplier side of the equation, so I was responding to RFPs put out by customers, some from the public sector, some from the private sector. So my experience in IBM had to do more with leadership and how to be a good supplier to organizations.
Speaker 2:One other thing that people may not be aware of is I really try to walk the talk on a lot of the things I'm advocating for with organizations and I decided a few years ago that I tried to get my carbon footprint under control. So I decided to see how close I could get to net zero and I entered the Canadian net zero challenge and it was an interesting experience. I started to realize that most of my carbon footprint was coming from my travel either in my car or in the plane, in planes. So I decided to take the leap and I stopped flying just before COVID actually not as a result of COVID, but I just stopped flying Try it for a year. And I haven't flown for the last five years and I don't think I ever will, because I used to fly all over the world doing talks.
Speaker 2:As you mentioned before, I do a lot of talks, so I was in Europe and India and China and Australia and New Zealand and they was all fantastic I mean great trips. But I decided to stop flying and I also decided to get an electric vehicle, a plug-in electric vehicle. My carbon footprint is now zero and I intend to keep it that way. I take the train and I also use bullfrog power and bullfrog natural gas, so I'm carbon neutral without using offsets. It's kind of nice to be able to say it's doable once you put your mind to it, Once you make that decision, which is the hardest part.
Speaker 1:Well, and, bob, I think that's part of the reason why your work is so well-respected, because you actually walk the talk, and I feel like we could probably do a whole podcast episode on the things you've learned going next zero. But today I want to pick your brain about sustainable procurement, and I want to get started, because I feel like some listeners may know what that means, others may not, so let's sort of level the playing field. What does sustainable procurement actually mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question, because it's an expression that's used quite often and very often with different meanings behind the use. So I'm on the board of the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council, splc, and the definition that they use for sustainable procurement is that sustainable procurement is getting best value for money when you're purchasing the most sustainable goods and services from the most sustainable suppliers in support of your organization's priorities and purpose and strategic goals. So it's looking at not only the attributes of the products, the goods and services, but also the attributes of the company that's producing those goods and services the suppliers. So that's the definition and, as we get into assessing how it's going for organizations, we assess the extent to which they are taking both of those things into account the attributes of the goods and services, as well as the attributes of the goods and services, as well as the attributes of the suppliers and making sure that their scores on those things matter when you're doing the bid appraisals.
Speaker 1:Now I know you talk a lot about net zero procurement and there's also circular procurement, so how similar or different are they from sustainable procurement?
Speaker 2:Yeah, lots of little different adjectives in front of procurement. So I think of sustainable procurement as the umbrella, the umbrella term, and underneath that are what the Canadian government calls green procurement, looking after the environmental attributes of goods and services. There's also social procurement underneath that umbrella, so paying attention to whether the organization is a women-led organization or indigenous-led organization or a social enterprise, that kind of thing as well, or a social enterprise that kind of thing as well. And underneath green procurement there's net zero procurement, circular procurement. So there's subsets. Sustainable procurement is the umbrella term and the others are subsets of that.
Speaker 2:So when we look at net zero procurement, the definition of net zero procurement is sort of a riff off the definition of sustainable procurement. So it's getting the most of the best value from purchasing the most low carbon and circular goods and services From suppliers who are most committed to reducing the greenhouse gases In support of the company's goals, priorities and purpose. So again, it's looking at the attributes of the goods and services and the supplier, but only looking at the greenhouse gas and circularity dimensions of that, not the whole ball of wax, just the climate-related attributes of the goods and services and the suppliers.
Speaker 1:Okay, I feel like I can picture it now, which I never could before, with sustainable procurement being the umbrella and then the adjectives falling underneath it. But, regardless, you've got the two aspects which is the product or the service, and how sustainable or green or circular that is, and the company, as well as the other aspect, to look at. There are a lot of aspects for companies to look at these days, and I mean sustainability is a huge one, but I feel like companies are dealing with so much. It's such an unprecedented business environment for uncertainty. Tariffs seems to be the word of 2025. Why, bob, should a company focus on sustainable procurement when there's all these other things that a company should worry about too? Right, that a?
Speaker 2:company should worry about too, right? So if they, as a company, care about sustainability and if they've got strategic goals relative to that for themselves not for their suppliers, but for themselves then they'll find that they can't meet those goals unless they engage the suppliers, because they're accountable for the impacts that their suppliers have on the environment and on society. They're mutually accountable for those things. It used to be, they weren't. These days they are. So you can't outsource the dirty stuff and get away with that anymore.
Speaker 2:People want to know what's happening in the rest of your value chain as a result of the production of your goods and services, or the use of your goods and services, or the disposition at the end of life of those goods and services, or the use of your goods and services, or the disposition at the end of life of those goods and services. So you need to keep track of all that stuff, and especially from a greenhouse gas perspective. We talk about the carbon footprint of the products which gets into the supply chain contribution to the carbon that's embedded, embodied in the goods and services, as well as the greenhouse gases that are emitted when you use those goods and services. So if you're manufacturing cars, then you need to take those into account. So the old days when you just had to worry about your own impacts are the good old days for a lot of companies. Right now, they are going nuts trying to be more responsible, not only in their own operations, but ensuring that they're dealing with suppliers who are also responsible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the supply chain aspect is so huge, and I think too there's a lot of ways that coming at it with a sustainable lens actually helps you be a better resilient business anyways. I mean, the studies show and there's a recent study where about half of companies reported reducing cost and increasing revenue as a result of their sustainability initiatives so it can be integrated right. It's not just one or the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and strangely, a lot of people think that sustainable procurement or net zero procurement is going to make the goods and services more expensive. It's actually the opposite very often. Uh, you save money and make more money. Uh, if your goods and services are more sustainable or if they're net zero, if they're decarbonized. So, as we get into the benefits of all of this, um, people are usually pleasantly surprised, or just surprised that it's not going to be that more expensive. You get best value, not necessarily the best price, but you get the best value Because if you are meeting your company goals by procuring from suppliers who are more responsible, then you're getting good value from that procurement responsible, then you're getting good value from that procurement, using your purse as a market force to create more responsible suppliers, which you get credit for, because now their contribution to your carbon footprint or your sustainability footprint is going to be less.
Speaker 1:So before we get into the how we actually do this sustainable procurement, I wanted to ask you around where the procurement can actually take place within an organization. We have a lot of listeners of this podcast who are folks in IT and in operations, sort of the non-traditional procurement department, but procurement obviously is part of what they do. So is sustainable procurement something that they can have influence over in one of these other related departments or does it always flow up to the overarching corporate sort of company procurement?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's both. It's both. If you do have a centralized procurement function, then obviously they're going to be doing that procurement on behalf of client or user departments in their organization. On the other hand, there are some parts of the organization that may be doing their own procurement without going through a centralized group.
Speaker 2:And again, they can implement as much or as little of these sustainability elements into their processes as they feel are appropriate. So yeah, there's no need for the operation to be central in order for this to happen. So, for example, in the federal government of Canada there is a centralized procurement group called Public Service and Procurement Canada PSPC, and they do a lot of the acquisitions on behalf of other ministries, other departments in the government. But groups like Shared Services Canada, which are the folks with the IT responsibilities for the government, have their own procurement function as well, and the armed forces also have theirs, for good reasons. So even in a centralized group like PSPC, there are people in other organizations, other ministries, other departments that are also doing procurement. The oversight of all of that hopefully has some consistency in what they ask for and how they ask for it, but very often they have some latitude to do more than perhaps the standards that are being used by all of those procurement functions require them to do.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you can have an influence on sustainable procurement whether or not you sit in the overall company organizational procurement department or not. I think that's really important to distinguish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially if you frame it as a pilot, you say let's try some of these things. Why don't we use our department, my department, as an opportunity's try some of these things. Why don't we use our department, my department, as an opportunity to try some of these things and see if it works the way we hoped it would, what the implications are for the suppliers, for us as a procurement staff, and then, if it seems to be a good thing, maybe we can roll it out to other functions, other departments as well. So, framework, as a pilot, you can get away with murder, calling anything a pilot. I'll tell you, I used to do that a lot in IBM, saying we're just going to try something here a little different from what the company thought was the right way to do things. But we can try something a little different, and it's a wonderful way to explore ways of doing things that you think are better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So start with a pilot, because I wanted to get into how an organization actually does this and I know you've created a lot of resources that I believe are free in order to help companies do this. So start with a pilot. What would be other advice you would give to companies to implement this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, take advantage of tools that are already out there that you don't have to invent again. So if you're going to undertake this, we talked about having let's take the net zero part the most low carbon and circular goods and services. How the heck do you figure that out? Like what's the questionnaire that you should be asking suppliers about in terms of determining which supplier is providing the most low-carbon and circular goods and services? So I've got a tool that does that. It gives you some sample generic specifications that you can ask for just about any product. Example generic specifications that you can ask for just about any product. It doesn't matter whether it's a computer or a desk or a building, just basic things that you ask about. And then there are a whole bunch of wonderfully free, open source databases, public databases of characteristics that you can ask about from a sustainability point of view for other product categories any product category. So it's not that tricky. It's really easy to get those specifications. On the other hand, if you want to buy from a supplier that's most committed to reducing the greenhouse gases in line with science-based targets, how the heck do you do that?
Speaker 2:So I've got a questionnaire that you can use. It's an Excel-based questionnaire. It's designed for small and medium-sized suppliers as well as large suppliers, because, as I think you know, most companies in Canada are small and medium-sized enterprises. So very often when I'm giving a talk, I ask if I had a scroll of all of the companies in Canada. For example, what percent of that scroll do you think have 500 employees or less, which is our definition in Canada of a small or medium-sized enterprise SME and it turns out that it's 99.7% of the companies in Canada are SMEs and if you drop that threshold from 500 employees down to 100 employees, which is the small category, it's 98.1%.
Speaker 2:In the US it's 98. In Europe it's 98.1. In the US it's 98. In Europe it's 98.1. In Africa and South America it's higher. 98% of the companies on the planet are SMEs and SMEs usually don't have the luxury of having specialized staff to look after sustainability. So we need a questionnaire that is reasonable for them to be able to answer but asks about all of the right things. So I took a look at a lot of the other questionnaires that are out there and I put together something called the Net Zero Ambition Assessment Tool. It's free, it's open source, it's in Excel, so you can change any of the questions if you want to change them, and it's extremely usable and it's really good.
Speaker 1:And where do we find all these resources? Are they on your website?
Speaker 2:So my website, sustainabilityadvantagecom, is where you go for all of these things and there's a menu at the top. You can go for the tools that have to do with sustainable procurement, or assessment tools or reporting tools all of those kinds of business case tools.
Speaker 2:So I've got about a dozen free, open source tools, one of which is this questionnaire for suppliers that I mentioned.
Speaker 2:So you don't have to make it up, it's there and you just use it and even if you don't understand the questions, it ends up giving a score, a score, a percent score. It's like a test. You get a percent score and then you use that percent to determine how many of the points associated with those particular attributes you have in the bid appraisal and you make sure that there are enough points there that it gets. The attention of the suppliers makes it matter. So the score determines what percent they get Done. So there's no burden on procurement people to figure all this stuff out. The toolkit gives them sample specifications for the goods and services sample questionnaire for the supplier, gives them some sample terms and conditions to put into the contract with the winning supplier, and it also gives a template for a sample bid appraisal template that would allow for the scores on the goods and services on the supplier to be determined how many points they get in the bid appraisal associated with those attributes.
Speaker 1:So we will link this in the show notes, because, wow, this is. It sounds like a lot of great tools that are free and that are to help companies, and I am also a firm believer do not reinvent the wheel, especially in something like this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and especially when you've got so many other things on your plate and I want to acknowledge that procurement people are besieged, besieged, overworked, with all of the demands that they get from their client departments or from their own department for goods and services that they desperately need and need quickly, and all of that good stuff. So they don't have time to figure all of this stuff out or even learn about it, they just need to be able to do it. So this toolkit is really net zero procurement in a box. It's a plug and play kind of thing. Just add these things. You're already asking for specifications for the products. Add these, maybe three or kind of thing. Just add these things.
Speaker 2:You're already asking about specifications for the products. Add these, maybe three or five of these. And you're already asking about the attributes of the supplier, like how long they've been in business and where they are and what their revenue is and are they going to be around long enough to honor their warranty and all that kind of stuff. These are some other questions about their sustainability or greenhouse gas attributes. So it's not that hard once you decide to do it.
Speaker 1:Okay, the other thing that I really liked looking at your resources was your signal prefer require a framework where you can actually like get started. Even before you go out to purchase something, you can signal to the market that this is important and this is something to start thinking about. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. It's really an important aspect of how you go about doing all of this. So let's suppose that you're an SME and you get this questionnaire and it's associated with a request for a proposal. So the RFP comes out and you're also supposed to answer this questionnaire so that they can decide how many points you get for your attributes as a supplier, how many points you get for your attributes as a supplier. Well, that could be a pretty daunting challenge, especially under the pressure of a deadline to get your answer and your response into the RFP. So the signal idea is that you send it to them ahead of time.
Speaker 1:Well, you're not buying anything yet, right?
Speaker 2:Just let them fill out the question as a dry run, like, give them three to six months to answer it, and then that's the baseline that they're going to be starting from and you may be able, as a customer, to partner with a supplier to help them do better on things that matter to both you and to them. So the idea is you send this out to all of your suppliers, regardless of whether there's a tender associated with this that they're going to be responding to. You send it out ahead of time and give them an opportunity to think this thing through in a way that works for them and get a score. And if they say, look, we don't have time, screw it, we're not going to do it, that's fine, they can still bid later on. They're just going to get zero on that part of the bid appraisal. So their score is zero. They don't get any points, but they can still bid and they may still win it with their the quality of their other specifications and so on. So the idea is you signal it.
Speaker 2:So let's suppose you're you're a big, you're a big customer, like, for example, the government of Canada. The government of Canada has a lot of suppliers. They have about three hundred, a lot of suppliers. They have about 350,000 suppliers. That's a lot of suppliers. So here's the idea they send this questionnaire out to all of them, kind of blasted out there, and encourage them all to send in their responses as sort of a diagnostic as to what's going on in the supply chain of the government around all of these things.
Speaker 2:And you have smart tools that help assess and summarize and analyze all of those responses and so on. But it gives everybody a chance to kind of get ready for when there is an RFP and they have to update their answers at the RFP time. So prefer means that you give. So the signal part is send it ahead of time, tell them you're going to make this matter their questionnaire. They are going to get more points for their score if their score is higher than their competitors on the questionnaire. So they are going to get preferred treatment. Government doesn't like to talk about preferential treatment, but anyway they're going to get more points, they're going to get more points, yeah.
Speaker 2:They're going to get more points. And then the required part is in the contract where you make darn sure that any commitments that they made about plans to do better in that questionnaire they are going to be contractually required to live up to. So that's the require part. So signal, send it to them ahead of time. Prefer at bid appraisal time, give them a higher score because they're scoring better than their competitors, and require is just a signal that their answers are going to basically be their marching orders when they win the bid and are contracted to actually do it.
Speaker 1:I think that's so. Smart Signal prefer, require and I'm going to use that methodology for quantum as we move forward with our sustainable procurement.
Speaker 2:I picked that up from SPLC. I heard them doing a presentation one time and they mentioned signal prefer require. I thought, wow, that's brilliant. That's the way to kind of slip this in, try it out, be fair to organizations that this is going to be kind of new, to give them an opportunity to figure it out without the pressure of a RFP deadline. I think it's really important yeah and it's simple too.
Speaker 1:All right, bob, let's move into our how-to section, formerly known as our rapid fire how-to section, but the answers were never rapid fire. However, if you'd like to make them rapid fire, you're welcome to. Okay, the first one we have somewhat talked about, but as someone who would sit in a sub department how to encourage your overall company to implement sustainable procurement or net zero procurement, especially if it's not quote, unquote your area.
Speaker 2:Right and to be fair, most procurement people are simply doing what their client departments, their user departments, are asking them to do. So if the user department needs a new computer system, they ask the procurement department to go find one with the specifications for performance et cetera that the user department needs. The user department may not necessarily ask about any of the sustainability stuff relative to what it is they're acquiring, what it is they're acquiring. So are the procurement people supposed to figure that out or just voluntarily add that to whatever the user department is asking about? It's very tricky for them to do that unless the organization already has strategic goals related to the specifications that they're going to add in there.
Speaker 2:So if the company itself is trying, the organization itself is trying to reduce its carbon footprint, then they need to be able to engage their suppliers in doing the same thing, because they're accountable for the supplier's carbon footprint.
Speaker 2:So if what you're asking is related to your organization's overriding goals, then it's fairly straightforward to do. If your organization doesn't have things like that, that's trickier, that's trickier. So you'll have to resort to the pilot part, the pilot ploy, to say why don't we try this and see if maybe this is going to be good for the suppliers and good for us, and, by the way, one of the reasons it's good for the suppliers is now they've got a score that they can share with bankers or investors or anybody else on things that they may be asking more pointed questions about as well. So it's a good thing for the suppliers to think through, because if they want to start trading with the European Union, for example, to avoid the tariff wars we're having with the US, the European Union is all over this stuff and they're going to be asking much more pointed questions about the attributes not only of the goods and services, but of the companies producing them, the suppliers producing them, the suppliers, right.
Speaker 1:I would also suggest that for someone sitting in a sub-department. Send them your website, sustainabilityadvantageca, and also send them this podcast. This is a really good roundup of what it all is and why it's important. Okay, one more. One more how-to question. Bob, I know you talk about how it's possible to eliminate carbon footprints through circularity. So how how to eliminate carbon footprint through circularity?
Speaker 2:Good question. In fact, you can't get to net zero unless you get into circularity. So if this is the company here and their supply chain, let's suppose you've got a tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four supplier in your supply chain. Circularity allows you to stay up here. You stay around the company itself and your tier one supplier because you don't have to.
Speaker 2:Tier 4 suppliers are normally responsible for extracting the materials, the minerals or growing the products that you are going to be using in your goods and services. So you don't have to do that anymore because you're recycling, you're reusing the parts from previous products. So you don't have to go through the extraction, the refining, the manufacture of parts and so on. All you have to do is put together the parts that are being recycled and so on. So circularity reduces about 45% of the carbon footprint of the products, which is a huge deal, is a huge deal. And then also it helps on the other end, the user side, of the value chain, and reduces the carbon footprint associated with that as well, because you're refurbishing the product and that extends the life of the product, which is another way of reducing the carbon associated with the purchasing of the product, because you don't have to purchase it. It's already there. So circularity is a means to the end, the end being reduce greenhouse gases in the system and stop having to refine and extract new materials for new products. Use the existing products.
Speaker 1:Yes, as you probably know, this is what we do at Quantum.
Speaker 1:We reuse and recycle electronics even reduce through repair. And actually we have a calculator that calculates the emissions avoidance of reusing and recycling and we see it depends on the product type, but we see that the emissions avoidance is seven to 21 times higher for reuse than over even recycling. So basically, recycling and electronic it's great, but if you can reuse it in some way, shape or form or parts thereof, it is seven to 21 times better from an emissions standpoint. Yeah, powerful data to back that up.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, Fantastic. And just building on that, I had a conversation with the procurement people in a municipality a few months ago and it was my first conversation with them. So I said so are you doing any sustainable procurement kinds of activities? Long pause, and then she said well, yeah, yeah, yeah, we send all of our used computers to the school boards. I said, oh, great, great, great, Anything else? She said no, no, that's about it. So when you ask me what's the definition of sustainable procurement, a lot of people have very mixed impressions as to what that is asking about and what it would look like if you saw it. So I'm continuing my dialogue with them to help them explore additional ways in which they can have more sustainable procurement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's lots of opportunities these days for circular opportunities. So we also saw, too, that at the recent Canadian Circular Economy Summit where we met, that there seems to be a shift overall. Of course, it's happening more within certain organizations than others, but there certainly is a shift in companies caring about not just sustainability but circularity, and it felt like for many years we've been doing heavy lifting around the education of why it's important to ensure the right thing happens, especially with electronics. What we deal with, that recycling is a great option, but reuse is even better if it's possible. It's possible to wipe data and not just destroy the whole device anymore, and we saw that there were companies finally coming to us like looking for solutions, like already being educated and understanding this is important stuff, and so we were really pleased. It seems to be a change in the overall what would you call it? There's a groundswell of companies actually understanding this now, and so we're optimistic.
Speaker 2:I agree. I'm on the Circular Innovation Council board in Canada as well and they do a lot of work on this and they were involved in the organization of that conference that we met at. And I agree that there is an awakening of the business community to the benefits of circularity, not only for the environment but for them as well. And that's great. And in fact, because I see circularity as a necessary cousin to a lot of the net zero stuff, I have tools that look at both of those things, both circularity and net zero, because they need each other. So I'm encouraging the circularity folks, for example, to piggyback on the net zero initiatives so that they can alert these organizations to the benefits of that, not only from a greenhouse gas reduction point of view, but also just from a business point of view. It's really, really smart.
Speaker 1:And all those tools that that's also on your website as well, Bob Yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're all there.
Speaker 1:Okay, great. So after this podcast for all the listeners, it's well worth your time to go to sustainabilityadvantagecom. All right, Bob, we have talked for a long time here and we always finish off with one last piece of advice to wrap this up. So what would your piece of advice?
Speaker 2:be. I wrote a book about how to be a leader and the business practices, leadership practices associated with being a leader. One of the seven leadership practices that I really encourage if you're trying to change something, is meet them where they are. So if you're trying to get your company to pay attention to sustainable procurement, net zero procurement, social procurement or whatever, find out what they're already prioritizing and show how what you're recommending is going to help meet those goals, those strategies, those priorities. So, for example, you may be aware that the government of Canada just put out the mandate letter.
Speaker 2:There used to be mandate letters that go out to all the ministries when a new government wins an election. This time it was one letter, it was for everybody and it has seven priorities, very, very tight priorities. None of them mentioned climate change. Oh damn, you know, for Carney to have such a huge background on the importance of getting climate change under control, it was kind of disappointing and surprising.
Speaker 2:But I thought, ok, fine, how can net zero procurement enable the seven priorities that he has? So I've taken the mandate letter and beside each of those priorities, I've shown how net zero procurement implemented not only at the federal level but provincial level and municipal level packaged so that it's a real nice package in a box, how that would be the means to the ends of those priorities. So relate whatever we're asking to the existing priorities, as opposed to positioning it as one more darn thing to worry about because they don't have that luxury. So we need to be smarter at doing that to re-swizzle what we're doing as not an end in itself but as a means to ends that already are important and exist. I think we need to be a lot smarter at that and help people see that we're not in any way trying to detract from their priorities. We're trying to help them reach the goals associated with those.
Speaker 1:So meet them where they're at and help them to achieve their goals. What I hear is integration they're at and help them to achieve their goals. What? I hear, is integration You're taking the net zero procurement ideas and integrating it, and so it's not standalone as well.
Speaker 2:And you reframe them and, frankly, a lot of that experience comes from every year in IBM Canada, we would get our marching orders from IBM corporate as to what we're supposed to be paying attention to each year and we had our own things that we wanted to pay attention to, but as soon as we saw theirs, we showed how paying attention to ours would help them reach theirs. So it's reframing the initiatives that you want to undertake as being supportive of the initiatives that they want you to undertake.
Speaker 1:Bob, thank you so much for your time today, for sharing your wisdom and your expertise over all these years and, frankly, I feel hopeful and inspired as well from today, and I will be taking a look at your resources, so thank you again.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for the opportunity, and you know, as a father and a grandfather, I'm concerned about this, not from an academic point of view, but for my real future of the lifestyles of my family. I think we are poised to be able to pull this off, to be able to do the things that need to be done, not only on climate, but some other things as well. To be able to pull this off, to be able to do the things that need to be done, not only on climate, but some other things as well. We just have to be smarter about how we connect the dots between what we want them to do and the things that we think are important to do as a mother, I completely agree, and I just got goosebumps.
Speaker 2:So we're going to do this.
Speaker 1:We're going to do this and remember, if you're looking for a partner in electronic circularity, we'd love to chat Head on over to quantumlifecyclecom and contact us. This is a Quantum Lifecycle podcast and the producer is Sanjay Trivedi. Thank you for being a circular future champion in your company and beyond. Logging off.
