Questions and Answers
How to answer the questions you or others may have about the Buy Right campaign
But it’ll be too expensive. We’re in a recession, don’t ya know?
Cost: It often doesn’t cost any more to switch to a more ethical product, it just takes knowledge about the effects procurement has on people in the Global South. Sometimes it may be more expensive. But procurement managers don’t have to buy the ‘cheapest’ goods, but the ‘best value’, and part of that is social and environmental sustainability.
Reputation: Buying socially sustainable goods protects the university’s reputation or ‘brand’ against risk. If the company is exposed by human rights groups in the future you may have to switch any way to protect your university’s good reputation. Why not do it in advance, when you can control the potential damage to your reputation?
Your procurement makes a difference.
Why should we bother with this?
Government Policy: The Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs 2005 Sustainable Development Strategy of 2005 and Department for International Development’s 2009 White Paper both say that public procurement should be used to aid sustainable development, including ethical trade.
Pioneer or Laggard?: Other pioneering universities are now switching to socially sustainable procurement. Soon they may all, if the government begins to require it. Don’t let your university be the laggard at sustainable development, and get left behind. Oxford Brookes promoted being the first Fairtrade Status University ever since, therefore building up an excellent reputation.
Green League: People & Planet’s Green League will now include a section on socially sustainable procurement. To maintain your position in the league in future you need to join the Worker Rights Consortium, pass the ethical procurement policy, and form a steering group.
Values: The values of universities should include the promotion of human rights. We need to protect the human rights of the people who make the products we use. Students want it, as the number of signatures on your petition will show. Procurement staff in a Environmental Association of Universities and Colleges survey said they wanted to go even further than Fairtrade. Now we can all move forward together through our shared commitment to human rights.
Ethical procurement - bringing students and staff together at Sheffield
Where can I find out the information I need to ethically procure?
There are different ethical, social and environmental issues around different products. Procurement managers can find out this information just by internet searching, and many already do take sustainable development, Fairtrade and human rights very seriously. However, if they want it all in one place the Sustainable Procurement Centre of Excellence website explains sustainable and ethical procurement, and see our resources page for custom made information sheets that they can use for all the major categories of things that universities buy.
