The StopWaste Sustainable Procurement Policy Template is designed to establish your agency’s core expectations around how your agency’s purchases will support your agency’s environmental, social, and economic values. It is intended to provide overall authority and direction for action, and type of action, via the “Core Strategies”, while leaving specific “how” details to supporting resources – the Sustainable Purchasing Guides.

This allows the Policy to maintain a longer lifespan as a core document, while leaving details that need more frequent updates to the supporting documents. It also authorizes a continuous improvement approach, through the “Minimum Requirements + Leadership Opportunities” model. It is designed specifically to be a template for your agency, in that you do not need to adopt the policy exactly as is.

In particular, the Core Strategies section provides template language for a variety of key procurement-related sustainability issues – but your agency should only adopt the ones that align best with your agency and/or that your agency has bandwidth for during your current policy development/review cycle. Similarly, only adopt those portions of the Reporting section that your agency can realistically commit to during your current policy development/review cycle.