Sustainable Purchasing Policy

Sustainability is a corporate priority for the Vancouver Airport Authority. As such, one of our goals is to embed sustainability into our purchasing decisions and ensure meaningful consideration of social and environmental criteria when selecting suppliers, products, and services. Our purchasing decisions will drive innovation, improve workplace and environmental outcomes, and support our commitment to be accountable to the communities that we serve.

What Sustainable Purchasing Means to Vancouver Airport Authority

In evaluating suppliers and their subcontractors, the Airport Authority will include sustainability as a weighted component of the evaluation criteria, to address sustainability risks and capitalize on opportunities. In the procurement of goods and services – for both operating and capital spending – our consideration of sustainability gives priority focus to issues pertaining to our four pillars of sustainability:

Environment: including waste minimization, water conservation, greenhouse gas emission reduction, toxin elimination, and energy efficiency;
Social: including worker health and safety; the protection of human rights throughout the supply chain; employment, contracting, and partnership opportunities for designated groups (i.e., women, visible minorities, Aboriginal people, and persons with disabilities);
Economic: a focus on being an economic driver for all sectors of the community, as well as receiving the best value from our purchases, based on a total cost of ownership approach, which includes costs from planning, acquisition, use, maintenance, and disposal;
Governance: a focus on supply chain transparency and strong accountability to our community through leadership in environmental, social, and economic issues.

How the Airport Authority Practices Sustainable Purchasing

When making purchasing decisions we will:

Weigh sustainability: include sustainability specifications relevant to the product or service in question in Requests for Proposals (RFPs), tenders, and single-sourcing contracts, and seek to minimize harmful sustainability impacts while balancing performance, price, and quality;
Encourage innovation: recognize and reward suppliers that demonstrate sustainability leadership in their organizational operations, and collaboratively engage other suppliers to improve performance on such initiatives;
Collaborate and engage: engage with our suppliers so that they and their subcontractors demonstrate strong workplace health and safety performance. Suppliers shall meet, at a minimum, the standards outlined in the Airport Authority's Supplier Code of Conduct, and we commit to working with them toward meeting and exceeding these standards;
Purchase the product or service that provides the best total value to the Airport Authority: ensure that the Airport Authority is receiving the best value from our purchases based on a total cost of ownership approach, including consideration for environmental, social, economic, and governance costs and benefits (where reasonably quantifiable) throughout the full product lifecycle, from planning and acquisition, to use, maintenance, and ultimately disposal;
Make measurable improvements: track and evaluate our progress in the area of sustainable purchasing, and report periodically on the strides we have made.