With Socially Responsible Contracting and Procurement (SRCP), the municipality of Utrecht leverages its own procurement to actively contribute to a sustainable and liveable city. To gain insight into where sustainability priorities lie within SRCP, CE Delft conducted an analysis of the climate impact and resource depletion of total annual procurement at the municipality. With the insights from this procurement analysis, the municipality has substantiated strategic procurement decisions within the SRCP action plan. The insight also facilitates awareness among internal clients. We also conducted a similar study for the municipality of Rotterdam.
Mapping of climate impact and resource consumption
Within the impact analysis, we examined both the climate impact of the municipality of Utrecht’s procurement and the influence of this procurement on resource depletion. These impacts largely take place outside municipal borders, in the supply chain of all materials, products and services purchased by the municipality.
For the analysis, we grouped all procurement into twelve ‘procurement segments’, which we then visualised in clear figures. These figures show which procurement segments the municipality spends the most on, the impact per euro spent and the total impact per procurement segment. This is shown below for the ‘climate impact’ theme. The result for resource depletion is shown in the downloadable pdf, on the right of this page.
High-impact procurement segments
The analysis shows that the Civil Engineering procurement segment in particular contributes significantly to the impact procurement has on climate and raw materials consumption. ‘Social Domain’ (including WMO (Social Support), youth care and other care functions) and ‘Real Estate’ (all buildings managed by the municipality) also contribute strongly, especially to the climate impact of procurement.