Introduction to SP
September 16, 2021
The Transforming Tourism Value Chains (TVC) project aims to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase resource efficiency in the tourism sector of the Philippines. This means encouraging not only hotels and accommodation establishments and the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events (MICE) industry to shift to more sustainable practices, but also their clients, suppliers, and other business partners as well. One of the ways that these tourism stakeholders can be more sustainable is to adopt sustainable procurement.
Starting September 15, 2021, the TVC project will be conducting an online awareness series called “Adopting Sustainable Procurement in the Tourism Sector”, where infographics, articles, and reports on sustainable procurement will be shared to stakeholders. The objective of this initiative is to provide recommendations and case studies of existing businesses that integrated this concept in their operations, feature the environmental impacts of three selected product categories, and advise how tourism businesses can purchase more sustainable alternatives, based on the studies that the project has developed. These materials will especially be helpful for Purchasing, Engineering, F&B departments, or for the Management, should they be interested in greening their business value chain.
So what exactly is Sustainable Procurement?
Sustainable procurement, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (2017), is defined as “the process whereby organisations meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves ‘value for money’ on a whole life basis”, in terms of generating benefits not only to the organisation, but also to society and the economy, whilst limiting damage to the environment.
A lot of things can be done to foster the wider adoption of sustainable procurement practices in the tourism sector. Some of these are:
- Working together with all relevant stakeholders along the tourism value chain
- Empowering travelers to drive change
- Capacity building initiatives towards corporate buyers and staff to accelerate the adoption of sustainable procurement practices
- Certifications and consumer information tools
You can learn more about sustainable procurement in the report Transforming Tourism through Sustainable Procurement published by UNEP (2019).
You can also access materials of our awareness series through our Facebook pages – Transforming Tourism Value Chains – Philippines and the Philippine Center for Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development, Inc (PCEPSDI).
