Sourcing responsibly, can it be done?

TRANSPARENCY CALLING
Our supply chains are getting more complex, and recent disruptions show how fragile they can also be. On top of that, the lack of transparency increasingly causes human rights violations and contributes to climate change. This has an effect on the legislative landscape that aims at tackling these issues. The EU Deforestation Directive, EU Human Rights and Environment Due Diligence Directive, German Supply Chain Act, and US Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, just to name a few, will in the coming years influence where we buy and how we buy, by demanding more transparency from the supply chains of global brands. With the new trends emerging, there is a need for new organizational functions to support the work ahead. This is a particularly complicated issue for the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector, which has large, complex, and truly global supply chains that span geographies, countries, and legislative frameworks.

RESPONSIBLE PROCUREMENT – AN EMERGING TREND AND PROFESSION
Responsible procurement is a term rapidly spreading into the corporate floors, tackling the sustainability agenda from the operational side rather than the high level strategic. It offers a more hands-on approach, anchored in the procurement or sourcing teams. Relatively new as a concept, and sometimes intimidating to procurement professionals as this is yet another hat that they are required to wear, responsible procurement asks not only for where or what to source (e.g., certified products) but most of all, how to source (e.g., by having awareness on local communities, transparency down the chain, etc.). Overall, we can define responsible procurement as the practice of evaluating the ethical, environmental, and social impacts of a given product or supplier alongside the more standard considerations of price and quality within the procurement process. The goal of responsible procurement is to improve the ethical, environmental, and social performance of suppliers and ultimately mitigate any negative impacts found within the supply chain.