25 essential questions to ask your suppliers on product stewardship

Product stewardship in a product’s lifecycle must be a journey that incorporates the “seed” of a contract, through to the “shoots” of product design, manufacture, transport, sale, and the “fruits” of product use, all the way to the “composting” at the end of a product’s life.

How can procurement support this journey and challenge their suppliers? Find below the 25 most essential questions, which you can ask your suppliers in order to create more sustainable products.

USE A LIFE CYCLE APPROACH
Good product stewardship practically means, that you use a life cycle approach. Using a life cycle approach will help visualize the hot spots in the products, develop product design scenarios and support the organization in engaging and collaborating with key stakeholders, to ensure improvements are implemented.

Taking a lifecycle view means finding the "sweet innovation spot" where consumer needs, environmental impact and technical and business capabilities converge. Taking a life cycle view also ensures, that improvements made in design actually do translate into measurable improvements in environmental performance.

The shared understanding is that the product, its packaging and the related supply chain has to be viewed as single solution, not a sum of disconnected parts when it comes to reducing its impact on the environment. A lifecycle view can ensure, that the environmental burden is not inadvertently increased elsewhere in the life cycle.

THE 25 MOST ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS TO ASK
If you want to use a life cycle approach or be good at product stewardship you, or your procurement professionals, will have to ask your suppliers some key questions. In our company we have developed a simple LCA tool (Life Cycle Assessment tool), which helps us gather the data and facts that we receive from the suppliers on a specific product, product line or category. Using the tool gives a good basis for discussions with the supplier on new design scenarios

Which questions could you use as a basis for your discussions?

Primary processes

1. What raw materials are used, e.g. are they renewable?
2. Could the extraction or processing of the materials cause air, land or water pollution?
3. Could extraction or processing produce waste?

Secondary processes

1. What resources are used during manufacture, e.g. energy and water?
2. Could the manufacturing process cause air, land or water pollution?
3. Will the process or product meet the requirements of an environmental standard or eco-label?
4. Are hazardous materials used?
5. How much packaging is used?
6. Does the process produce waste?
7. Does the manufacturer have good working conditions and pay a fair wage?

Distribution

1. Where will your products or services come from, e.g. what distance will they have to travel?
2. How will a product get to you, e.g. air, rail or road?
3. How will goods be stored, e.g. will they need cold stores?

Use

1. What resources will be used during use and maintenance, e.g. energy, water, hazardous materials?
2. Will the product need to be handled carefully, e.g. could it cause air, land or water pollution?
3. Does the product have a limited shelf life, e.g. could it go out of date and need to be disposed of before you use it?
4. How easy will it be to get the product repaired if all or part of it stops working?
5. Will staff need training to use the product or service efficiently?
6. Will using it produce waste?
7. Will equality or diversity issues affect service delivery, e.g. does the service meet the needs of different users and those with different cultural backgrounds
8. Could staff providing a service be exploited, e.g. low pay, antisocial hours?

End of life

1. How will you dispose of it? How long will it last?
2. Do you have to follow any legal requirements to use, store or dispose of it?
3. Can it be reused, remanufactured or recycled?
4. Will it produce hazardous waste?

Would you like to learn how we have worked with product stewardship and how we could possibly help you utilize this approach in the procurement organization - please do not hesitate contacting us.

You can also go ahead and download our e-book on Lifecycle Efficiency in Procurement right here.

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