887: Sustainable Procurement: Where Policy Meets Practice W/ Nicole Darnall

"If you're not thinking about what you inherit through your procurement decisions, then you're not truly serious about managing your climate impacts." - Nicole Darnall, Professor, Arlene R. & Robert P. Kogod Eminent Scholar Chair in Sustainability, American University - Kogod School of Business

Companies have spent years setting sustainability goals, developing policies, and asking suppliers for more information, but there can still be a significant gap between those commitments and the decisions procurement teams make every day.

In this episode, Philip Ideson is joined by Nicole Darnall, Professor and Kogod Eminent Scholar Chair in Sustainability at American University, to explore procurement's role in turning sustainability commitments into measurable action. Nicole has spent more than two decades studying sustainability, including the last decade focused specifically on procurement.

Nicole explains why so much of an organization's environmental and social impact sits beyond its own walls and how purchasing decisions can influence those outcomes. She and Philip discuss the disconnect between sustainability policies and implementation, the growing burden of supplier surveys, and why procurement needs better ways to determine which sustainability information actually matters.

They also explore how procurement teams can identify the purchasing categories where they can have the greatest impact and how sustainability considerations are beginning to intersect with AI and data center sourcing decisions.

In this episode, Nicole discusses how to:

-Close the gap between sustainability policies and procurement decisions

-Identify the spend categories with the greatest environmental or social impact

-Ask suppliers more meaningful sustainability questions

-Incorporate sustainability criteria into the RFP process

-Look beyond purchase price when evaluating true cost

-Use AI to support sustainability decisions throughout the procurement cycle