Sustainable Procurement in Action, Part 1 of 3: Sustainability and Procurement Series

An Interview with Mat Langley Part 1

Interviewed by Paul Vorbach

Paul Vorbach: Mat, it’s a pleasure to have you here to join this discussion, and to help us all understand more about sustainable procurement in action, and also the circular economy. Thank you very much indeed.

Mat Langley: Let me pull up some slides and we can jump straight into it.

In my view, sustainable procurement is on about its third or fourth wave. This evolution started about 25 years ago when we began talking about corporate social responsibility. It then moved into corporate responsibility and ESG, and now we are really into the action phase, which feels quite positive. We are moving from measurement to management, a shift that is becoming increasingly visible.

Most organisations have now set net-zero targets for 2040 or 2050, which matches commitments made at the country level. The longer you wait to start this journey, the steeper the curve you will have to climb to meet those commitments. Consequently, there is an urgent need to engage suppliers on Scope 3 emissions. As a reminder, Scope 1 covers your direct emissions from the fuels you burn, Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from purchased electricity, and Scope 3, helpfully, encompasses everything else. Scope 3 is split into upstream (the supply chain, which represents the majority of emissions) and downstream (the consumer use of products).

Generally, companies have about 80% of their emissions under Scope 3, so it is a very big area of focus. If you are a large company like CBRE, you will have a massive number of suppliers and a long tail. While you may now be ready to start decarbonising, the first challenge you will hit is that your supply chain might not be ready. In 2022, data from Schneider Electric and broader research indicated that 70% of companies had not even started looking at Scope 3; they were focusing primarily on Scope 1 and a little bit on Scope 2 energy efficiency. Today, closer to 50% of companies have initiated Scope 3 work, but that still leaves half of the global supply chain unprepared.

Therefore, supplier engagement is a crucial aspect to build into your program. A second challenge arises if you try to bypass direct engagement by organising your data and calculating supply chain emissions solely by spend using industry-average emission factors. While this is a great first step for identifying hotspots, this approach relies on averages, and spending more money even on carbon-reduction initiatives, can artificially inflate your calculated emissions. This creates a paradox where the only way to reduce emissions on paper is to cut spending, which executives reject as it stifles business growth.

To escape this trap, you ultimately need primary, actual emission data from your suppliers, which brings you right back to the first challenge. However, this introduces a third obstacle which involves communication: the supplier data in your finance systems typically routes to accounts payable. Trying to discuss carbon reductions with an accounting department rarely works. Procurement teams need targeted Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) solutions to reach the right operational contacts.

The fourth challenge is widespread education. You have to educate your customers, internal teams, suppliers, and even their suppliers. This education isn’t just about sending out an ESG survey; it’s about providing tools and explaining why this data is needed and how to calculate it easily. For example, when working with Emitwise and Green Project at CBRE, we found that simplicity is key. Their platforms pulled in whatever data suppliers had already published; if a supplier had no published carbon data, they could simply enter their spend data, and the system would calculate it for them.

This was a highly effective approach that expanded into providing databases for decarbonisation initiatives and renewable energy options in the supply chain. You really have to support your suppliers significantly. Ultimately, you need to cast a wide net, use spend data to prioritise hotspots, and then identify and collaborate with leading suppliers to achieve real impact. Interestingly, no single industry is entirely ahead of the others, but there are always one or two “unicorn” suppliers in every sector that are far advanced in sustainability, diversity, or resilience. Unless you are actively capturing this data, you could easily eliminate them from your supply chain during standard RFP processes without realising their value.

When you start on this journey, you encounter a lot of jargon. The three most important terms to understand are corporate carbon footprint, product carbon footprint (PCF), and service carbon footprint. The service carbon footprint is relatively new and less discussed. The product carbon footprint is a subset of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). When beginning your data journey, any data from a supplier is a win because it shows engagement, and you can supplement it with spend data.

However, by the second year of engagement, you should encourage suppliers to calculate their corporate carbon footprint, specifically their Scope 1, Scope 2, and upstream Scope 3 emissions. We exclude downstream Scope 3 here to avoid double-counting. Dividing their total emissions by their revenue yields an intensity factor (emissions per dollar spent), which allows you to compare suppliers.

As you narrow your focus onto top categories and hotspots, you will want to go deeper. Knowing a supplier is low-carbon overall is helpful, but you eventually need to understand the specific impact of the items you buy, requiring a shift toward the product carbon footprint (PCF). Leading organisations are already driving this. For example, Haleon incorporates a PCF alongside a carbon price (e.g., €100) into their RFPs to calculate the total commercial and environmental cost for a true like-for-like comparison. Similarly, the NHS in the UK will require a PCF for every single product they buy by 2028. This requirement is rippling through global supply chains, so if you export or work with large clients, you will start seeing this demand soon.

What comes next is addressing services, which make up a massive portion of the supply chain but are harder to calculate. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) introduced the Partnership for Carbon Transparency (PACT) methodology, which is the standard everyone follows to calculate PCFs, and there are many free calculators available now. The goal is to mature toward decision-grade sourcing, robust contracting, and strategic SRM discussions.

I once ran a workshop asking whether data or supplier engagement was more important. In truth, they go hand in hand. You have to move suppliers through a maturity spectrum. Because half of them are starting from scratch, you must help them establish a baseline. This baseline data also provides insights into their overall resilience, helping you factor energy risks into your supply chain strategy. Furthermore, compliance support is necessary because initial data can be wildly inaccurate; Emitwise and Green Project found that companies reporting to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) frequently mix up kilograms and tonnes, throwing their figures off by a factor of a thousand.

Leading organisations have moved past baselines and initial engagement into the “act” phase. They are helping category managers interpret this data to optimise supplier selection and build long-term capability.

To do this successfully, you need to move beyond basic carbon accounting toward comprehensive supply chain decarbonisation solutions. These platforms track suppliers’ active green initiatives and their transition to renewable energy, which directly reduces your own indirect emissions. This allows you to embed sustainability into commercial levers, RFPs, and contract clauses. While contract clauses alone don’t entirely move the needle, combining them with continuous improvement KPIs and robust data-driven conversations enforces the realisation that sustainability is a permanent requirement.

Paul Vorbach: Can I jump in there, Mat, with a couple of questions? That was a great overview, particularly the way you outlined the stages of maturity and the different classifications across corporate, product, and service carbon footprints. I will ask you about the service carbon footprint in a moment, given that a lot of our students work in human services organisations where ESG discussions can feel a bit removed. But before we turn to that, I know you spend a lot of time thinking about things from the supplier’s perspective. You mentioned that KPIs and contract clauses are not always enough on their own. On the positive side, can participating constructively in this sustainable supply chain movement become a source of competitive advantage for suppliers? Are you starting to see organisations that invest in this and show true credentials winning more business, particularly with government buyers or clients with explicit sustainability commitments?

Mat Langley: Absolutely, when I created the net-zero supply chain program at CBRE, we designed a product for facilities management clients that provided total transparency into our supply chain. It allowed the client at the top to see through CBRE as tier one, and right down into tiers two and three, so we could collaborate on reductions.

This is why I believe category managers will become the superstars of the future. They will realise that you don’t just negotiate with tier-one suppliers; you work across the entire value chain including clients and sub-tier suppliers to make a much bigger impact. When we provided this transparency to CBRE clients, they were thrilled because adjusting their own requirements could instantly fast-track emission reductions throughout the entire chain.

This joint ownership is exactly what Scope 3 is designed for. Regarding whether sustainable suppliers can charge a premium, research generally says no. However, you do sell more; your revenue grows even if margins remain steady. Initially, alternatives like biodiesel or green hydrogen faced limited adoption due to the extra costs associated with their processing steps. But looking at data from companies like Booking.com, buyers are highly willing to select the more sustainable option if two suppliers are at a similar price point even if the green option is up to 5% more expensive.

The research also highlights this from a risk perspective. Sustainable suppliers typically possess better processes, clearer procedures, and superior business transparency. They are inherently lower-risk, more resilient partners, which provides a strong positive externality when weighting suppliers during procurement.

Paul Vorbach: As I alluded to earlier, a lot of our students at the University of Queensland, as well as those pursuing CIPS qualifications, work for human services-based organisations. Can you talk a little bit more about the service carbon footprint and how that is evolving in both the public and private sectors?

Mat Langley: Unlike the product carbon footprint, there isn’t a universally standardised framework like PACT for services yet, though Green Project and the Scope 3 peer group are currently developing novel methodologies to address this. CBRE was fundamentally a service company providing facilities management, yet its supply chain emissions totaled about 5.5 million tonnes, the equivalent of a small country. Just because an organisation is service-based does not mean its impact is negligible.

Initially, a corporate carbon footprint works well for service companies because you can evaluate corporate real estate, business travel, flights, and their own service-heavy supply chains. However, as you mature, you need a finer unit of measure. For instance, CBRE spent billions with cleaning companies. If a client wants to reduce emissions by having a supplier switch to electric vehicles specifically for their account, we need to be able to isolate and calculate that specific impact. For professional services like legal aid, you might use a Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) metric, allocating a portion of building and flight emissions to that specific role to allow for a like-for-like comparison.

Paul Vorbach: Mat, with a view to your book Sustainable Procurement in Action, which is on the recommended reading lists for the University of Queensland’s diplomas and advanced diplomas. Could you give our students a quick overview of what is covered and how it might help them dig deeper into this field?

Mat Langley: The book is written specifically for the practitioner looking to start this journey. I recount having an “Everest moment” where I mapped out our emissions hotspots, and it felt like the clouds parted only to reveal Mount Everest. CBRE had 7,500 suppliers that needed to be engaged within three years just to have a chance of halving our emissions by 2030.

Because of that, the book is packed with practical steps, frameworks, and case studies. It leverages insights from the Scope 3 peer group, the Sustainable Procurement Pledge, and leading global practitioners. It covers environmental actions, social aspects like living wages, and governance topics such as building internal business cases to secure executive buy-in. It is a comprehensive guide.

Paul Vorbach: Well, thank you so much for your time. That has been a great introductory overview of sustainable procurement, and I highly encourage our students to look into your book. Thank you, and I look forward to our next conversation.

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.