Summary / Key takeaways
Healthcare procurement is a powerful lever for improving environmental, social, and economic outcomes across health systems. Every purchasing decision influences upstream and downstream impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions, resource use, waste generation, labour conditions, supply chain resilience, and patient care quality. Given the scale of healthcare spending, procurement represents a key opportunity to drive system-wide change. Increasingly, traditional approaches focused on lowest cost are being replaced by “whole lifecycle” and “true value” perspectives that consider environmental, social, and economic impacts over time.
Sustainable procurement is broadly defined as integrating sustainability considerations into purchasing decisions. The International Organization for Standardization describes it as procurement that maximizes environmental, social, and economic benefits across the full life cycle, including impacts along supply chains and contributions to organizational and societal sustainability goals. In Canada and globally, frameworks increasingly emphasize four interconnected pillars: environmental impact, social responsibility, Indigenous reconciliation, and economic and supply chain resilience.
Practical tools support this shift by guiding organizations in embedding sustainability into procurement policies, procurement processes, supplier engagement, and contract management. These include approaches for integrating sustainability criteria into requests for proposals, evaluating supplier claims, and monitoring performance over time.
Effective implementation requires strategic alignment across procurement teams, leadership, and suppliers, as well as awareness of policy context and opportunities for collaboration. By embedding sustainability into procurement decisions, healthcare organizations can reduce environmental harm, strengthen supply chains, support equity and Indigenous priorities, and improve long-term system value.
Playbook: A Reusables First Approach to Healthcare Procurement
Suggested Citation:
Stigant C, Nour S, Finkle N, Devitt K. Sustainable Kidney Care. Version 1.0. [Internet]. CASCADES; 2024 [cited DATE]. Available from: https://new.cascadescanada.ca/.
