How to organise procurement practices and chemical selection?
When it comes to purchasing, considering chemicals is essential in order to ensure that only those chemicals that comply with the company policy pass the company’s “entry gate”. To accomplish this objective, all the information necessary for the safe handling of chemicals needs to be available.
Purchasers need to be competent in identifying hazardous chemicals in the documentation of input materials (SDS, label etc.) and communicating about them with suppliers. They should cooperate with other departments to ensure that requirements regarding the purchased input materials for the company’s own product are specified and complied with early in the purchasing process.
Purchasers may have to differentiate between
The company policy may differentiate between these types of input materials, because the impacts along the lifecycle of chemicals differ.
What are the advantages of chemicals-related criteria in purchasing routines?
Purchasers initially screen all input materials for compliance and conformity with the company policy and ensure that no raw materials are purchased that would endanger the achievement of the company’s goals.
Products that do not correspond to company policy can be excluded from purchasing with little effort and without involving additional company resources.
The availability of information for the safe handling of chemicals is checked and information is distributed to the relevant departments, e.g. OSH or environmental managers, as well as storage personnel and staff responsible for other chemicals-related tasks.
The purchasing department gets a good overview of input materials on the market and their content of unwanted chemicals;. Iif no alternatives are available, information can be forwarded to the top management for decision making on exemptions from the chemicals policy and goals.
What are the main principles and aspects of purchasing criteria?
- The purchasing criteria should be based on company policy and its goals. If company policy aims to phase out the use of SVHCs in input materials, reflect this in the purchasing criteria, e.g. “No SVHCs are indicated in Section 3 of safety data sheets (SDSs) of mixtures or Section 2 of the SDS of substances.”
Certain chemicals, like PFAS, may be of very high priority in company policy and should therefore be reflected in the purchasing criteria!
- If it is a target to reduce the amount of SVHCs in input materials, a process should be established to monitor the amounts of SVHCs in input materials, including criteria for exemptions, i.e. when SVHC usage is acceptable. This could include guidance on which processes are highly dependent on certain input materials (product quality) or where substitution might require changes of processes (high investment need).
- Consider information on customer demands regarding the use of specific substances in purchasing, because this might be essential for maintaining business relationships.
- Define indicators to monitor the change in purchasing and/or content of specific chemicals in your products due to considering chemicals-related criteria to assess progress and improvement needs.
Document challenges in purchasing due to chemicals-related criteria and procedures to learn how routines and criteria should be designed to be implementable.
Step-by-step
Assess Current Purchasing Organisation
Assess how purchasing is currently organised. Identify key responsible staff and discuss the intended changes to consider chemicals-related criteria in purchasing.
Translate Policy Into Purchasing Criteria
Analyse the company policy and translate the goals and targets into purchasing criteria, i.e. requirements that a product must fulfil.
Develop Restricted Substances List
Consider developing a list of restricted substances for your company that is provided to suppliers so that they are aware of chemicals that should not be contained in their products.
Review Supplier Contract Requirements
Assess existing (standard) supply contracts and identify options to require all suppliers to provide products that comply with your company’s demands on chemicals and transparency.
Define Supplier Compliance Proof
Discuss if and how suppliers should prove the compliance of their products; include such requirements in standard supply contracts.
Update Purchasing Control Procedures
- Assess existing operating procedures for purchasing processes and integrate steps to:
- Check that chemicals-related criteria are fulfilled;
- Assess if proof of compliance is provided by the suppliers if relevant;
- Check documentation provided with chemicals to verify whether it is complete, correct and up-to-date;
- Document the above steps, e.g. in the supplier evaluation section of the chemicals inventory (cf. Chapter 3).
Set Monitoring Indicators
Define criteria for monitoring the implementation of the purchasing procedures and identify indicators to measure success. In addition, integrate data collection processes for measuring indicators in the purchasing routine.
Assess Purchasing Staff Competence
Assess the competences of purchasing staff to conduct the purchasing process for chemicals; either develop staff training plans to close competence gaps or identify options for delegating tasks to staff in other departments.
Assign Purchasing Responsibilities
Define responsibilities for implementing chemicals-related purchasing procedures and integrate a management handbook (if one exists).
Define Management Reporting Routines
Define the purchasing department’s reporting routines and schedules to the top management.
Adapt Material Management Systems
Ensure material management systems and/or the chemicals inventory are fit-for-purpose to integrate (new) data from purchasing and support reporting and progress monitoring.
More resources
A practical guide for companies on green procurement, helping them set up or improve internal purchasing systems with a focus on managing and reducing hazardous chemicals in materials and supply chains.
A guideline explaining how to create and implement a chemical purchasing policy to ensure that suppliers meet requirements on restricted substances, transparency, and safety, helping to control and phase out hazardous chemicals in the supply chain.