Circular Procurement in Action, Part 2 of 3: Sustainability and Procurement Series

Friday, 3 July 2026

An Interview with Mat Langley Part 2

Interviewed by Paul Vorbach

Paul Vorbach: It’s great to have you with us, Mat. Thank you for your time.

Mat Langley: Let’s jump into it. Following our discussion on sustainable procurement, we are going to run through circular procurement, which is a key aspect of sustainability. Interestingly, Australia is leading in this space. While many countries are focusing primarily on carbon reporting compliance, Australia has pushed further into circularity, which I really like.

So what is circular procurement? It is not just recycling. I worked with a colleague of mine at CBRE to create a book around this, and I heard her say, so many times and very patiently, ‘No, that’s linear.’ Circularity is really about how you create a product, use it, and then pass it on so it gets reused. It centers on how you can continuously repair and reuse an item.

You might think, “How does this relate to sustainability and carbon emissions?” Every time you buy something new, it comes with embedded carbon. If you repair something and continue using it, you are only responsible for the carbon emissions from the repair. Consequently, circularity becomes a key component of decarbonisation.

At its core, circular procurement addresses how we do more with less through repairing, reusing, refurbishing, and remanufacturing. That sounds easy, like you just go out and get something repaired, but you actually have to think through the operational components. It is very easy to fall back into a linear approach.

Currently, there are a lot of interesting aspects coming to the forefront, such as digital passports tracking the lifecycle components of a product, an initiative that Europe is looking to drive. Ultimately, you are trying to recover value at the end of a product’s life by shifting your entire purchasing mindset. This means moving from “I bought this furniture” to “I rent this furniture,” or “I am going to reuse the furniture I have because I can repair it.” Then, you work with designers to bring that vision to life.

Probably the best example I have occurred during my time at CBRE. A major banking client in London was consolidating five buildings into one. CBRE got involved a couple of weeks before the consolidation began, and we asked about the furniture. The client said, “Oh look, it’s got zero cost on the balance sheet, so we’ve bought five million pounds’ worth of new furniture.”

CBRE was able to recover about a million and a half pounds’ worth of their existing, high-quality furniture instead. They had bought the furniture five years earlier; during a standard five-year refit, they overlooked that the warranty was for ten years and the assets could last for twenty.

Otherwise, that furniture would have been discarded, minimally refurbished, or donated to charity, eventually ending up as waste overseas, creating a massive logistical mess. The issue was that, because it had a zero balance on the balance sheet, it was considered worthless. Yet, it still held immense value from a carbon perspective and in its physical components.

To me, that is a great use case: unless you change your thinking, you will follow the linear approach by default. To make circularity happen, procurement teams need to thoroughly plan it out, which requires a complete cultural shift.

From a procurement perspective, it starts with identifying the right categories. That is why we focused our book specifically on office fit-outs and facilities, as there is a lot of opportunity there. Packaging is another good opportunity. Construction is also interesting; in London, and I know this has happened in Australia as well, developers have reused the shells of buildings so they don’t have to pour additional concrete during fit-outs.

Equipment can also be looked at a lot more. When I was at Metcash, we managed to keep materials handling and lift equipment running a lot longer. The key is to pinpoint the specific categories that work for you, and then change the specifications. You have to work closely with designers, because their instinct is often to integrate desks into buildings so it looks seamless. However, after five years, you end up ripping it all out because the lease has finished or it is time for a refit. Whereas, if you use modular furniture or incorporate a take-back requirement from the supplier, you can continue using those assets and keep them out of landfill.

This approach means you potentially spend more money up front to secure a durable, repairable solution. However, looking at the total cost of ownership over the life of that product, it ends up being a lot cheaper because you are not replacing it every five years.

But you have to think the process through fully. Say you want to use this furniture, and you have agreed with the head of real estate to invest a bit more capital. You secure a good, modular product with a ten-year warranty. If it breaks down or needs a component replaced, but you haven’t planned for spare parts and maintenance, you will often find you can’t repair a simple arm, leg, or wheel. You must ensure a method is in place where the supplier takes it back and services it.

Alternatively, there are companies like E CapEx, which I also advise, that bring that circular thinking and provide the necessary repair services, logistics, and warehousing. Often, companies will store excess equipment “just in case,” spending a lot of money on unnecessary warehouse space. Today, they can utilise a rental platform or an asset-management solution. They can list all their assets digitally, allowing different divisions to trade, sell, or buy items as needed. This approach needs a bit more lead time; it is not as instantaneous as buying something new. So, again, you need to think through the supporting ecosystem, and luckily, there are a lot of companies that can support that.

It means you are writing a different RFP. Instead of treating it as capital expenditure to purchase furniture, you treat it as operating expenditure to rent furniture over a longer term. Then, you have to bring in take-back requirements, aligned KPIs, and so on, to get to the best level. By measuring these metrics, you actively reduce your carbon footprint, minimise waste, and extend product lifecycles. This is where you want to engage with your staff so they don’t misinterpret the move and say, “Oh, what a cheap company, they’re just using used furniture.” There is a whole purpose around it. Potentially, it is a bit more expensive upfront, or procurement has taken longer to run the RFP because it is no longer just a standard sourcing event; it is about building an entire ecosystem and spending more time with suppliers. You want your staff to realise that this is about reducing carbon and minimising landfill impact, while unlocking significant financial benefits over the total cost of ownership. It is also a great case study of how a company genuinely lives the values of its environmental and net-zero commitments.

As I alluded to at the start, circularity is a key component of any sustainable procurement strategy. There are six main elements to a sustainable strategy, and it depends on your company as to which levers you want to use. At CBRE, I started with risk: I wanted to understand how sustainable and resilient my supply chain was, and what I could do if there were any issues. Others start with climate and carbon emissions. Circularity then feeds into that by lowering emissions, since you are replacing individual components rather than entire products. Circular procurement also sits within the nature aspect, because you are using fewer raw materials and reducing waste. Alongside this, you always have social value and diversity, underpinned by strong supplier engagement and category management.

There are a whole bunch of benefits to circular procurement. As I said at the start, Australia is really world-leading in this space and has thought it through, offering some really good examples of what is happening at a government and city level. You can build quite interesting programs here, and there are a lot of resources that the government has put out as well.

Paul Vorbach: Thank you, Mat. I appreciate that overview; it was very informative. A couple of questions came to mind throughout your presentation. I think you have partly answered them, but it might be an opportunity to dig a little bit deeper, with a view to the roles and interests of our students in our University of Queensland and CIPS education programs.

One question is around the distinctions between the public sector and the private sector in terms of influencing stakeholders. You made it very clear that economic considerations such as the balance sheet value you mentioned with the bank being ready to write off the furniture was a very interesting point. In the public sector, a lot of the thinking, of course, extends well beyond financial statements, as they seek to support service delivery within the communities they work in. In terms of trying to influence leadership and management, are there any suggestions or observations you have seen that have worked well in the public context, whether it is local government, a state department, or agencies like health or the Commonwealth?

Mat Langley: I think this is a really interesting area. A lot of governments prioritise buying locally. For smaller markets like Australia, while you are not producing everything, you often have a great ecosystem of local repairers. If you are a large office in a small location, you can almost have someone working full-time helping you develop this system. This ties right back to managing repairs, maintenance, and the local ecosystem. Instead of sending items overseas to be repaired, keeping it local helps build the regional economy and provides local jobs. Even if a product is manufactured overseas, the ongoing repair, warehousing, and management can be retained locally.

Paul Vorbach: So, we can see roles for small businesses participating constructively in circular procurement. Part of the concern I have had is that, when a lot of this translates into compliance, it is typically the savvy, large organisations that have the resources to build dedicated tender-response teams. They know exactly how to tick the right boxes, whereas this relative burden can be unmanageable for small businesses. Have you seen any creative or interesting ways in which buyers can respond to that? Is the solution around supporting smaller businesses, or is it in the way requirements documents are written? Any observations on that, Mat?

Mat Langley: I think those are the key levers. When you are trying to bring diverse or local suppliers into your supply chain, running a national tender simply is not going to work. You need to break it up, which takes more time and effort from a procurement, category manager, or sourcing perspective. We have always been taught that bigger is better, that a bigger RFP with more scope yields more cost savings. But that makes it a lot harder to bring in local teams who might only service a specific geographic pocket, or a diverse supplier that you need to spend time growing. So, you need to rethink the scope of the RFP, evaluate the requirements, look at what is available, and determine how you can support local suppliers. The structure of the RFP is important, and that must be paired with active supplier engagement and support.

Similar to working with a diverse supplier, you cannot take a business from a small local area and suddenly give them a national contract; any company is going to fall over if they expand that quickly. Instead, you give them a small location, work with them, provide feedback, allow them to learn, and then help them expand. This extra effort is part of why this doesn’t happen as often as it should, there is more work involved, and more risk inherent in relying on smaller companies.

But it is better for the local community, and it is better for the resilience of your supply chain. You are not relying solely on overseas suppliers that might face logistics issues due to geopolitical tensions, closed straits, or other disruptions. Building that resilience into your supply chain is incredibly important.

Paul Vorbach: I think those themes you have touched on, supporting small and regional businesses, are areas the public sector certainly claims to interest itself in through policy. Sometimes the execution of the policy is not elegant, but at least it opens the door for conversation. It is not entirely about the short-term bottom line, the next quarter, or half-yearly earnings.

For our public sector category managers and procurement professionals, there is a different message to craft in terms of circular procurement, its role, and the inevitable effort required. Whether we are talking about sustainability more broadly or circular procurement, leadership in this space necessarily entails real effort; there is probably no shortcut.

Moving to a similar theme, you touched on the idea that employees like to work for organisations that care about the environment. Can you share any further thoughts on how organisational culture, and the alignment between younger generations’ personal values and environmental concerns, can tie into genuine demonstrations of circular procurement?

Mat Langley: That is an interesting one because, as we said in the introduction, with 25 years in procurement, my background has been quite hardcore commercial. I wrote the book Circular Procurement in Action: Closing the Loop on Fitouts, Furniture & Facilities with Hélène Carpentier, whom I worked with at CBRE. She really is an expert in circularity and has pushed a lot around culture and training. Her view is that if you want to make this shift, you have to bring the staff along with you.

A lot of the things she focuses on within circularity programs center on how you engage with staff so that they feel ownership of it. It does take a little bit of extra time to separate your recycling into different bins, and maybe it requires more diligence than what people do at home. But I do see that the generations entering the workforce have had more training and a deeper understanding of this, and they view it as highly important. I have watched this evolve over a long time; my first few organisations were not interested at all, but I kept at it, and the landscape has changed. I have witnessed a genuine cultural shift, and it is a great lever to utilise.

Paul Vorbach: And the competition for talent is always there. An organisation that wants the best and brightest has to be able to appeal to a broader set of interests than just remuneration, I suspect.

Mat Langley: Yes, absolutely. I have personally made choices about the companies I work for based on those exact values.

Paul Vorbach: Very interesting. Tell us a little bit more about Circular Procurement in Action: Closing the Loop on Fitouts, Furniture & Facilities, which you co-authored with Hélène Carpentier.

Mat Langley: That is a book we put together driven largely by the example I used earlier regarding the bank in London. I just thought, “This is crazy.” As I got deeper into carbon emissions and trying to decarbonise supply chains, I realised there is an obvious, easy win available through circularity. Most organisations have offices, execute fit-outs, and manage real estate which, after data centers, is generally the second-biggest area of corporate emissions.

So, it has a massive impact, and changing our approach doesn’t actually take that much. It is simply a new way of thinking, as we have discussed today. The book details how to apply this mindset to fit-outs and the facilities management suite. We included quite a few case studies and practical examples that readers can leverage. It is a relatively quick read, but it is highly practical; we wanted people to be able to pick it up and start using it the very next day.

Paul Vorbach: We are including it on the recommended reading list for our diplomas and advanced diplomas at the University of Queensland, and for our students as part of the AcademyGlobal Centre of Excellence as well. Mat, it is always a pleasure having a conversation with you. I really appreciate your time and thank you for providing such a helpful, practical overview.

About Mat Langley

Mat Langley is a procurement and sustainability leader who has embedded sustainability into more than 25 years of procurement practice. He has led global centres of excellence across sourcing, category management, analytics and supplier management at CBRE, the largest real estate company globally. At CBRE, Mat led Procurement Operations, Technology Transformation, Data, Risk and ESG, and built a first-of-its-kind net-zero supply chain program and product.

Mat is the 2024 European CIPS Sustainable Procurement Champion, and a regular speaker and judge at CIPS events. He is a former Sustainable Procurement Pledge Scope 3 co-chair and current emerging tech co-chair. He has advised Green Project Technology and Emitwise, a carbon accounting and supply chain decarbonisation start-up, as well as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Mat is the author of two books on these topics, Sustainable Procurement in Action: Integrating climate, nature & equity across the supply chain and Circular Procurement in Action: Closing the Loop on Fitouts, Furniture & Facilities, the latter written with his colleague Hélène Carpentier. He is currently employed at SunRice.

About Paul Vorbach 

Paul Vorbach MCom, LLM, MBA, FCG, F.ISRM, FAICD, FGIA is the Founding Managing Director of AcademyGlobal(AG). He has taught at post-graduate university level and for leading professional associations including the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia (IPWEA) and the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA). He is Vice President of the Institute of Strategic Risk Management (ISRM) and Adjunct Academic at the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) at the University of New South Wales.

AcademyGlobal partners with public sector, private sector, and not-for-profit organisations to build the capability that underpins sustainable delivery performance. AG is the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) Centre of Excellence, and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), the first APCC-certified provider of the Procurement and Contracting qualifications through its partnership with the University of Queensland.