This year saw environmental sustainability brought to the fore of many conversations and debates in our personal and professional lives with the arrival of COP26 in Glasgow. With most of our members engaging in the event in lots of exciting ways, it was great to see all the great work our sector is doing to pushing the agenda forward on climate. Some of the resources the UKUPC Responsible Procurement Network has made available to UKUPC members are as follows:

• A glossary of terms – created to describe specific details of responsible procurement, ensuring consistency across all projects from all organisations
• A standardised set of tender questions that relate back to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. A later version was released outlining ‘what good looks like’ to assist members in evaluating supplier responses, you can request this from your local consortium. There are over 100 questions for institutions to choose from in areas such as gender equality, carbon reporting, clean water, and sustainable forms of governance.
• A Modern Slavery Act guidance document for suppliers to help them understand the Modern Slavery Act, and to write meaningful modern slavery statements. It was aimed at suppliers that might currently be under the turnover threshold, or those that simply need guidance.
• The HE TOMs measure set; UKUPC, HEPA, the Social Value Portal and member institutions have been working collaboratively to identify a solution which enables organisations to procure, measure, manage and maximise social value in procurement activity in a consistent way and define the benefit in £'s.

Some additional ways UKUPC supports members to achieve their goals are by:

• Embedding sustainable practices throughout the procurement process; from strategy, tender and evaluation to contract and supplier management, to ensure that risk around climate change is highlighted and addressed
• Supporting colleagues across our membership to address climate change in their procurement activity
• Working with colleagues across the Public Sector in order to learn and share best practice
• Engaging with, and challenging, suppliers to work with the UK consortia to address climate change
• Producing Supply Chain Green House Gas Emissions (Scope 3) data for organisations annually

Looking at APUC’s Veterinary Supplies framework, available to all UKUPC members, one of the suppliers planted 420 trees in the month of November of which 60 were directly attributable to activity on the framework. One tree is planted for every 250 GBP spent on the framework. The same supplier is also in the process of launching a new catalogue in January centred around sustainable products (and defining what they mean by "green") and implementing their Green Plan. Members buying from items in the catalogue will not only be sourcing more sustainable products, in some cases 100% recyclable or 100% reused, but contributing to offsetting carbon within the supply chain.