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SPLC 2018 Summit: Working Session: SPLC Sustain
- 1. Working Session Anastasia O’Rourke, Sam Hummel, Mark Petruzzi May 15, 2018
- 2. Today’s Session 2 • Background on SUSTAIN o www.sustainablepurchasing.org/SUSTAIN • Overview of the SUSTAIN Prototype • Input on initial purchasing categories to launch SUSTAIN • Overview of the SUSTAIN Scoring approach • Next steps and staying engaged
- 3. SUSTAIN: Our Motivation 3 • Many large institutions want to buy more sustainably. • They often then confront the question: What is more sustainable? • Ecolabels, standards, and certifications can help answer this question. • However, there is a lack of clarity about which sustainability standards, certifications, and labels are credible. • This is holding back the potential for purchasers and suppliers to contribute to creating a positive sustainable future.
- 4. SUSTAIN: Shared Solution 4 A transparent, fair, and independent service assessing and recommending credible sustainability ecolabels, standards, and certifications using a rigorous methodology developed through nearly 10 years of multi-stakeholder input.
- 5. SUSTAIN: Goals 5 • Generate positive sustainability impacts. • Simplify and future-proof sustainable purchasing. • Give purchasers and suppliers clarity and confidence on what is more sustainable. • Drive convergence towards more effective programs. • Grow the market for sustainable products and services.
- 6. SUSTAIN: Components 6 1) Evaluation of sustainability standards, certifications, and labels. 2) Publication of sustainability standards, certifications, and label recommendations. 3) Provision of recommendation data for integration into ERPs, catalogs, etc. 4) Education about how to use the recommendations in ways that prioritize impact. Recommendations will tie-into SPLC’s other programs, such as Guidance, BENCHMARK, etc. 5) Intelligence on the use of sustainability standards, certifications, and labels. 2) Publication of sustainability standards, certifications, and label recommendations.
- 8. Prototype 8
- 9. Prototype 9
- 10. Prototype 10
- 11. Prototype 11
- 12. Prototype 12
- 13. Prototype 13
- 14. Prototype 14
- 16. Potential categories intermission (and stretch opportunity) 16 1. Cleaning products and cleaning services 2. IT equipment 3. Building finishes and furnishings 4. Cafeteria / food service items 5. Services 6. Vehicles and transportation 7. Enterprise-level sustainability 8. Contracted printing services / printing inks 9. Non-paper office products 10.Paper products (office and janitorial) 11.Other First choice Second choice Third choice 5 MINUTES Please place a sticker next to your top three category choices for which you’d like to see ecolabels, standards, and certifications evaluated in SUSTAIN.
- 18. Assessment Criteria Summary 18 Environmental and Social Criteria Including Hotspots Category - Criteria Standard Setting Criteria Program Criteria Certification Criteria Program Management Criteria • Applies to organizations • Developed by SPLC based on EPA Guidelines & Accreditations • Applies to standards • Developed by SPLC based on Delphi Panels • Informed by EPA Guidelines
- 19. Assessment Criteria Summary 19 Environmental and Social Criteria Including Hotspots Category - Criteria Standard Setting Criteria Program Criteria Certification Criteria Program Management Criteria ~10 ~12 ~14 ~8 # Required # Core # Leadership # Required # Core # Leadership # Required # Core # Leadership # Required # Core # Leadership
- 20. Criteria Classification 20 • Criteria that are not yet standard practice, and that demonstrate a meaningful improvement over the status quo. o Example: Evaluate effectiveness. Ecolabel program has established a methodology and procedure to evaluate the effectiveness of the standard in addressing environmental and/or human health impacts. Evaluation has been completed within the last five years and is publicly available. Important characteristics of a credible standard/label, already widely used; however, SUSTAIN allows modest flexibility for SDOs to miss a small number of core criteria. o Example: Quality objectives. Ecolabel program has an established quality management system and/or documented commitment to fulfilling quality objectives. Prerequisites. Necessary preconditions for a standard/label to be credible. o Example: Free from undue pressures. Ecolabel program does not allow commercial or financial pressures to compromise impartiality. Required Core Leadership
- 21. Scoring Thresholds to Make Recommendations 21 • To be “SUSTAIN-Gold” or “Silver”, programs must score as follows: Type of Criteria SUSTAIN-Gold must meet SUSTAIN-Silver must meet TBD 0% ~85% ~75% 100% 100% # Required # Core # Leadership
- 22. Key Scoring Concepts 22 • Programs will be scored in absolute terms against the assessment criteria; they are NOT scored relative to other programs. • There is no upper or lower limit on the number of programs SUSTAIN recommends. • Criteria will be scored as meets/doesn’t meet. Partial credit will ONLY be given for hotspots criteria, as determined by Delphi Panels. • Category criteria will be weighted more heavily than the other three sections. • Single attribute standards will not be eligible as SUSTAIN- Gold, unless Delphi Panel directs otherwise.
- 23. Sign the open letter of support Nominations for SUSTAIN Advisory Committee Comment on category roadmap and criteria Nominations for Delphi panels Partnerships that link to/enable SUSTAIN Founding Sponsorships SUSTAIN@sustainablepurchasing.org www.sustainablepurchasing.org/SUSTAIN INITIAL FOUNDING SPONSORS Next Steps and Staying Engaged OPEN LETTER
Editor's Notes
- Thanks for taking time to attend today’s session and your interest in SUSTAIN. I’m Mark Petruzzi… I’m an engineer (twice) and prior to working with SPLC on SUSTAIN I spent about 20 years working for Green Seal developing standards, conducting certification evaluations, and building partnerships and demand for sustainable products and services. Today I’m joined by Anastasia O’Rourke [Dan Leistra-Jones] from Industrial Economics. After the EPA pilot evaluating standards, certifications, and labels for 3 categories wrapped up at the beginning of 2017 there was still a lot of interest and need. Last summer at the Summit SPLC introduced the idea of SUSTAIN and since that time has been working to map out the program. There’s some additional background on the SPLC website, including an earlier briefing (that includes input from 30 stakeholder interviews) and an open letter of support that we would welcome your signing as we continue development and fundraising. Today, we are excited to share with you a prototype for SUSTAIN – for how the results will be shown and how the scoring system works. We want to get your feedback on these and input on initial purchasing categories. First Anastasia will run through the Prototype, then we’ll take a short break to look at categories, and then we’ll talk through the scoring methodology that underlies the ability to make the recommendations.
- As a reminder of what we are doing with SUSTAIN….
- What is SUSTAIN? Transparent Fair Independent service Assesses and recommends std’s ecolabels and cert’s Building on a 10 year history includes EPA’s work piloting recommending ecolabels and standards; and previous work undertaken with GSA and the Green Products Roundtable (the predecessor to SPLC)
- The goals of SUSTAIN tool are to: Generate positive sustainability impacts. Simplify and future-proof sustainable purchasing. Give purchasers and suppliers clarity and confidence on what is more sustainable. Drive convergence towards more effective programs. Grow the market for sustainable products and services. Design goals we are trying to meet Simple - to understand how to use this information to make better purchasing decisions Specifiable – You could specify “SUSTAIN Recommended” stuff “Future proof” – specifying SUSTAIN Recommended programs will be current no matter when your purchase takes place. Differentiations made by SUSTAIN are meaningful, impactful (hotspots), and defensible (fair, transparent, rigorous)
- Here are the key components of the SUSTAIN program. Today, we will be focusing on the publication of the results of the assessments; and also give you some background on how we come up with the assessment results. We think its really important to get this right, as this will mean SUSTAIN is used or not used > and has implications for the rest of the program elements. Another time we can share the evaluation methodology and steps; and governance system behind the program. Now I will hand the presentation over to Anastasia O’Rourke from Industrial Economics who will walk us through the prototype. ANASTASIA: Hi everyone, I am so excited to share our prototype with you today, and really look forward to your input – on the call or later. With this group I probably don’t need to say it – but don’t be shy! We would love to hear what you think. As you heard from Mark – our goal with SUSTAIN is to make it simpler to buy more sustainably, and to bring needed clarity to both buyers and sellers of products and services as to what is more sustainable. Standards, labels and certifications are a KEY MECHANISM by which this gets decided.
- So let’s now look at the core Website that will house more information on SUSTAIN What you see on the screen is a mock of up the SUSTAIN website homepage. The website it set up to answer key questions from different stakeholders. For example, for purchasers it answers the question: “What ecolabels standards or cert’s are recommended by SPLC for any xxx category that I am buying”. We will also have guides to navigating and using the site for other stakeholder, including: - Suppliers (who want to know “what is the SUSTAIN Recommendation for my category” or “which ecolabels should I be getting my products certified to” Ecolabels, Standards and Certification programs who want to know “What are the best practices that SPLC recommends” and “how can I connect to purchasers?” In addition, the site will be useful for policy-makers and NGOs who want to engage purchasers, and lead us to more sustainable and effective programs. To start from the top of the page – we have a simple navigation. With a lot of detail behind the scenes. We dont want to scare people with the detail up front, but we do want to make it available to them and be fully transparent about our methodology, and process. This is important for our own credibility to give people the CONFIDENCE in SUSTAIN recommendations. The gray box represents an image. In the center there is a clear “call to action” with the FIND Sustain Recommendations button. That would lead users to the Recommendations section. On the left there are three main ways of sorting the information. Today I will just show you how we get to more detailed information through products and services.
- This is a mockup of potential categories. We are currently working on a standardized list of categories that is intuitive AND mapped (behind the scenes) to most product classification systems used by institutional procurers. The categories you see in the drop-down list in blue have been evaluated by SUSTAIN and are marked with the SUSTAIN logo. The items in gray are known categories, but they have not been evaluated yet by SUSTAIN. They will link to the general lists of ecolabels for the categories, with no recommendations. We think it’s important to know what programs are available, even if SUSTAIN has not yet assessed them. As categories are evaluated, they will turn blue and gain the logo, so we can build up the site over time, category by category.
- Once a category is selected, the sub-categories appear in a high-level format that acts as mini profile for that category. Keeping within flooring as our example, each mini profile contains: a sub-category title a description of the scope of the category the number of ecolabels that is relevant for that category that SUSTAIN has assessed the key hotspots identified for that category (using symbols), a link to SPLC category guidance that contains other guidance on purchasing strategies beyond standards, ecolabels and certifications, and A link to spec-ready recommendations for the category in simple language. For categories that are not yet assessed (such as “cork” on the left) we will link to the number of relevant labels, but will show hotspots as {not yet determined}; and information on WHEN results will be given for the category (if provided). You can also see on the left an “amazon-like” navigation tool that shows you were you are in the site, and lets you move between categories without having to start at the homepage.
- Once a category is selected, the sub-categories appear in a high-level format that acts as mini profile for that category. Keeping within flooring as our example, each mini profile contains: a sub-category title a description of the scope of the category the number of ecolabels that is relevant for that category that SUSTAIN has assessed the key hotspots identified for that category (using symbols), a link to SPLC category guidance that contains other guidance on purchasing strategies beyond standards, ecolabels and certifications, and A link to spec-ready recommendations for the category in simple language. For categories that are not yet assessed (such as “cork” on the left) we will link to the number of relevant labels, but will show hotspots as {not yet determined}; and information on WHEN results will be given for the category (if provided). You can also see on the left an “amazon-like” navigation tool that shows you were you are in the site, and lets you move between categories without having to start at the homepage.
- After a sub-category is selected, in this case “Flooring Tiles”, a comparison chart is shown. Again on the left, we show the navigation bar. Below it, we add the sustain recommendations, so you could turn on or off those that are not recommended, and the table would update accordingly. In the table, the Ecolabels, standards, and certifiers are listed in order of Recommendation, with the SUSTAIN- Gold being shown in the light pink area at the top of the chart. They are also identified with the filled in pink circle. You can see also in the sustain assessment criteria, whether they met the section of the criteria or not; and you can download supplementary specification language for those that need it. This “Supplementary guidance”, for silver and or not recommended labels… if you were to use them, here is how to do it responsibly. For example if you are federal purchaser and you are mandated to use a program that is not SUSTAIN Gold, this will help you to fill in the gaps to make it leadership.
- Each key term on the page will have “hover-over” text that explains what the recommendation symbol means.
- If you click on a specific Ecolabel, an even more detailed page appears. This shows more about the label, and how they scored by section of criteria. You can also download the full assessment results if you really want to know the detail. It shows hotspots addressed for this category. And gives additional detail that we think is useful to purchasers and other users. On the bottom right we show the other categories that this label applies to and how it performed for that category. Finally, we provide links to various places people can find the certified products.
- Recap
- We’re going to roadmap the initial product categories that will launch SUSTAIN and we’d like your input on which categories would be most useful for you in the next 12 months or so. Green – Yellow - Red Please take a few minutes to place stickers on your top three choices for categories for which you’d like to see ecolabels, standards, and certifications evaluated in SUSTAIN.
- To come up with the final results – as shown on the screen – we have done quite a lot of thinking. Will show you today the most important pieces related to SCORING and WEIGHTING of assessment results to come up with the final recommendation. We know that this group in particular like to see what is “behind the curtain”! And all of this will be published also, we will be very transparent about the criteria and scoring approach.
- A reminder that there are four sections of assessment criteria in two big groups: Program Criteria, applied to organizations. Category Criteria applied to the standard and whether they address the hotpots for a given category. Here we are building on EPA’s work (give props to EPA). It was designed in this way by EPA because there are often different configurations of organizations providing different aspects here. We will stick with the same overarching approach. There are some key differences to how we develop the Category Criteria to what EPA did –we will use Delphi Panels and are adding Social Criteria. But the basic structure of the four sections of criteria are the same. Combined - The assessment results of these criteria add up to the assessment results and recommendations per category.
- Each section has more specific criteria. For example, EPA’s criteria has 14 criteria in Standard Setting. One step in creating SUSTAIN will be to finalize these criteria, with input from Advisory Committee and other stakeholders. We don’t have time to get into how that will be done today; that is another longer presentation! But for the purposes of scoring, its important to know that there will be around 36 program criteria, and perhaps 5-6 category criteria (depending on how many hotspots are identified for a category). Some criteria will be designated as “required” (have to meet ALL of them) and others and “Core” (need to meet MOST of them). In addition, we will have some that are “Leadership” which only some will meet, to get the SUSTAIN-Leader Score. We are doing these three levels because it gives us a greater degree of precision and accuracy in the assessments.
- Let me give you an example of the three levels of criteria. These are taken from the EPA Guidelines from the “Program Management” section (section 4). Starting at the BOTTOM, required criteria – these are “Necessary preconditions for a standard/label to be credible”. For example, the program demonstrates that they are free from undue pressure and can make impartial decisions. In the MIDDLE, are core criteria – these are “Important characteristics of a credible standard/label, already widely used; however, SUSTAIN allows modest flexibility for SDOs to miss a small number of core criteria.” For example most programs have quality systems. However, not all of them are great at documenting those programs, and so we can give some flexibility on scoring this one. At the TOP are leadership criteria – these are “Criteria that are not yet standard practice, and that demonstrate a meaningful improvement over the status quo” For example, programs that actually evaluate their effectiveness and impact and document it is a leadership practice that we as a community want to encourage and reward.
- We will be testing-out these three levels with real criteria, and we might adjust the levels shown in the table. When we determine the threshold of leadership, we will finalize these into the tiered recommendations. We expect that SUSTAIN-Silver needs to get ~75% within each section. The point is to make meaningful differentiations between the leadership and good, and the less good programs.
- Here are some other key scoring and assessment concepts we are using. Absolute not relative scoring This means that there is no upper or lower limit on # programs SUSTAIN recommends. It also means that we can add new programs and dynamically build up the set of Recommended programs/ No partial credits unless allowed by Delphi Panel in Category Criteria Single attribute standards will not be eligible as SUSTAIN-Gold, unless Delphi Panel directs otherwise.