We always look for the most eco-friendly suppliers of whatever it is we need to buy and consider all relevant factors when making a purchase. This is because we're not only interested in hitting our own environmental targets - we want to promote green ideas across the rest of the world as well.

When making our buying decisions, we take into account:

• Environment. We try to minimise the environmental impact of making, using and disposing of products, and of the supply chain.
• Society. We try to purchase in a way that benefits the local community and economy.
• Money. We try to ensure that we buy the best suited products and solutions in a way the delivers best value for money.

How we're improving our procurement practices

• We're monitoring the impact we have on the environment through what we buy (this is called "Scope 3 emissions"), and developing strategies to continuously improve in this area. Having identified areas for improvement we are currently developing action plans to reduce Scope 3 emissions in the aim of achieving the Net zero carbon emission target by 2050.
• We're working with our suppliers to help them reduce their impact on the environment. This is built in to how we choose who we work with, and the way that we work with them once they're chosen. We are using Net Positives as a tool to create an evidence based approach to drive activity progress and change to reduce negative impacts while identifying opportunities to increase positive impacts.
• We're improving the principles that we base our designs on by adding in requirements that reduce our impact on the environment both while we’re putting the plans in to place, and when we're using whatever we've created.
• We've achieved up to Level 3 (of 5) of the Sustainable Procurement Flexible Framework. This is evidence of our commitment to ensuring goods and services are procured in the most sustainable way possible. We are now working towards Level 4.