Guest lecture on CSRD and purchasing
What is the relationship between purchasing and the CSRD? I was asked to give a guest lecture on this subject to students of the minor purchasing management at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. After a short introduction to the CSRD, we discussed the opportunities and threats we see in mandatory reporting on sustainability by companies.
Opportunities we saw are:
- Thanks to the double materiality analysis, you know what risks your company is running and you can steer on that
- If a company is working on sustainability, it attracts more (young) people
- Customers are increasingly critical and ask for more sustainable products and services
- Banks are increasingly giving discounts on loans to companies that can demonstrate that they contribute to a better climate and/or society
- It promotes chain cooperation because companies cannot become more sustainable on their own
The following points emerged regarding threats:
- Companies have to report a great deal. That is a lot of work and also costs money, which could be better spent on sustainability itself
- It is a reporting party for accountants
- Reporting on how sustainable a company is is no guarantee for progress
- Because large companies also have to report on their chain, small companies also have to deal with it because they have to provide information
For the minor, the students had to deliver a professional product in which they provide advice on possibilities for purchasing a product more sustainably. Although there are no annual reports yet that have been drawn up according to the CSRD, I showed the students a few examples of sustainability reports from which they can obtain information about a company’s chain and the impact, risks and opportunities that are important. It was fun to discuss with the students how they can use information from sustainability reports for their purchasing assignment.
