Sustainable purchasing: what becomes of the broken-hearted?
February 15, 2008
A failure has to be avoided, because it would undermine the credibility of the government. What should be done? Prioritise! Smart implementation of ambitions follows a simple line: “Think big, start small, scale up when successful”. The government has a tendency to follow a different route: 1) think big: high ambition for sustainable purchasing to be realised in a short period of time, while criteria have not been defined, 2) start big: try to implement this ambition across the entire purchasing portfolio, and 3) fail big: lack of focus and realism results in no significant progress at all.
The ambition for sustainable purchasing should now be geared towards those parts of the portfolio that have the biggest potential sustainability impact. This analysis should have been made at the start, but a quick recovery should be executed now. Thus one would know what to aim for. This is not likely be the catering, but for example the construction and building. By allocating resources across the entire portfolio without this kind of prioritisation, efforts are wasted and it is not to be expected that real impact is to be made. Not very efficient, nor effective or sustainable. That would leave us as the broken-hearted, in a land of broken dreams, just as in Jimmy Ruffin’s song.
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Great song