The Challenge of Sustainability in Procurement

Annemieke de Gooijer from the Dutch National Bank (DNB) presented in November at the Cash & Payments Sustainability Forum™ in Edinburgh on the Dutch experience of including sustainability in its procurement processes.

The DNB manages the Joint European Tender (JET) on behalf of nine national central banks (NCBs) in the Eurosystem ¹. The European Central Bank (ECB) receives data from the NCBs on their issuance and withdrawal of notes and determines the production volume of new notes. The volumes are allocated to NCBs for production or procurement of finished notes in line with the capital key ².

The DNB has a sustainability strategy that is aligned with that of the ECB. For the cash cycle, the focus is on risks related to bio-diversity and the reduction of the environmental impact of activities such as electricity consumption of ATMs, greener waste disposal methods, increasing the durability of notes etc. The DNB has been pursuing these goals for 15 years.