In focus | Sustainable procurement

In the face of the climate crisis, museums are using their power and platform for good. Sustainable procurement is one way in which museums can champion sustainability and social responsibility, as well as equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), producing positive effects throughout their supply chains.

By harnessing their collective buying strength, museums can achieve value for money, encourage innovation, and help make the world a fairer place.

India Divers, a policy officer at the Museums Association (MA), says: “We know that many museums are under pressure financially. But all museums buy things – regardless of their size or governance – so the focus of the MA’s Museums for Climate Justice campaign has been around procurement and the tangible actions museums can take that make a big impact.”

Where to start

The international standard ISO 20400:2017 defines sustainable procurement as “procurement that has the most positive environmental, social and economic impacts possible over the entire life cycle”.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals also promote sustainable procurement. Although the concept might seem complex, it boils down to the choices we make when we buy stuff.

The MA’s Museums for Climate Justice resource hub offers guidance and case studies about sustainable procurement. Climate action charity Julie’s Bicycle has also produced a sustainable-procurement guide, which advises organisations to start by making a list of purchases, suppliers and annual spending. Museums can then look for ways to improve.

Can your museum develop a sustainable-procurement policy that sets expectations for suppliers? Is it asking staff to suggest environmentally sustainable alternatives? Does your museum want to source locally?

“You decide what is important to you,” says the MA’s climate change trustee, Sara Kassam. “Sustainable procurement is a way to engage people. They will have different insights into the goods and services they’re buying, and may come up with better options.”

Sustainability work isn’t static and you can change things as you go along.

Kassam is a former sustainability adviser at UK Sport and the Victoria and Albert Museum. UK Sport has produced a guide to EDI and sustainable procurement that outline impact areas to consider. These include:

• Energy use
• Vehicle emissions
• Embodied carbon
• Resource use
• The natural environment
• Supplier diversity
• Ethical considerations including human rights, modern slavery, trafficking and working conditions

The guide also includes an EDI and sustainability-procurement questionnaire that procuring managers can ask suppliers to complete.

“Building time into projects to research suppliers will help you to make more sustainable choices and add to your organisation’s social value,” says the MA’s Divers. “Simple questions such as ‘is the supplier working to reduce carbon emissions?’, ‘do they have a sustainability plan?’, ‘do they pay their staff a fair wage?’ and ‘do they have a written equality and anti-racism policy?’ can help inform who we work with and encourage best practice in other organisations.

“We know that it can be harder for local authority museums to influence procurement processes, but many local authorities will already have sustainable-procurement strategies that can support museums with their buying decisions.”

Exhibition framework

One challenge for those that want to operate more sustainably is that organisations in the early stages of their sustainability journey can sometimes get stuck in “analysis paralysis”.

“Don’t let the perfect drive out the good,” says Elise Foster Vander Elst, head of exhibitions and environmental impact lead at the Design Museum, London.

Inspired by its Waste Age exhibition, the Design Museum created a guide to reducing the environmental impact of exhibitions. It provides a framework to ensure that minimising the museum’s carbon footprint is considered at every step of the exhibition decision-making process. Informed by research, the guide includes decision trees, questions to ask designers, contractors and suppliers, RAG (Red, Amber, Green) lists for guidance, and an impact model to help calculate an exhibition’s estimated carbon footprint.

The Design Museum’s Enzo Mari exhibition (until 8 September) embodies that learning. Sam Martin from Martin Museum and Heritage was brought in as the build lead, as he had the technical expertise to communicate the museum’s ideas about reuse to the contractors.

This ensured everything was feasible and clearly communicated in tenders. “We need to support contractors to do things differently,” says Foster Vander Elst.

The Enzo Mari exhibition features moveable walls that are designed to be reused.

“It makes no sense to build temporary walls and discard them after a six-month show,” says Foster Vander Elst. “It’s like fast fashion – what’s the environmental cost?”

An accompanying free display showing Enzo Mari’s influence on contemporary designers features reused plinths and AV equipment, section panels made from Foresso No-Chip material (derived from extraction dust and waste wood), VOC-free paint, graphics hung with English-made Baker’s twine, local timber, and printing by B Corp zero-waste printers.

“We have a responsibility to communicate what we’re doing to visitors,” says Foster Vander Elst. “We do this through our programme and exhibition content. We also have a QR code at the end of the exhibition explaining what we’ve done to reduce the environmental impact.”

Foster Vander Elst believes that visitors want to see change. “The Indigo Act Green 2023 report showed 77% of audiences think cultural organisations have a responsibility to influence society to make radical change in response to the climate emergency,” she says. “Also, 91% expect them to ensure materials are reused after an event or exhibition.”

Openness is crucial within the sector, too. Museums need to be transparent with each other, sharing best practices and lessons learned.

Foster Vander Elst wants the sector to develop an  accreditation system for greener exhibitions. She says there may also be an argument for museums to do fewer exhibitions in future.

“I’m not trying to talk us out of jobs, but we can look at the big picture and make judicious, well-researched decisions to ensure what we’re doing is sustainable,” she says. “Because, right now, I don’t think it is. We all need to radically change. At the Design Museum, we’re passionate about using
design to help us out of this planetary emergency.”

Collaboration is vital, as exemplified by the Gallery Climate Coalition, which helps arts organisations reduce their environmental impacts, and the South Ken ZEN+ programme, which has a shared approach to sustainable procurement.

Community spirit

The Iron Age-focused Scottish Crannog Centre on Loch Tay – which reopened at Easter after a fire destroyed its replica crannog house in 2021 – aims to be Scotland’s most sustainable museum.

“We set out to work with as many people and materials as possible within travelling distance of a crannog dweller,” says the centre’s director Mike Benson. “The people who have made our coffee staff’s aprons are six miles away. Our IT provider is 15 miles away. The people supplying home-baked food for the cafe are six miles away. We use local timber, roof heather and reed for thatch.”

This community-minded approach was a response to the public support it received after the fire.

“We wanted 1,000 fingerprints and 1,000 voices over our plan,” says Benson. “We needed to support the people who supported us. We understand that you’ve got to spend your public money well. But if you want to engage, inspire and work alongside the folks outside your door, that’s what you do from the start. You have to understand your value – and your values. You can be cheaper, but you won’t have the same value in the place you’re living and working.”

In addition to growing and harvesting materials such as willow and hazel, the centre trains staff and apprentices in skills such as blacksmithing, thatching, fencing and green woodworking.

New buying strategy

Manchester Museum’s shop stocks mugs handmade locally, triceratops earrings laser cut from sustainable bamboo, Afropop Socks from designers with African heritage, and Manchester Worker Bee keyrings tooled from recycled leather.

The museum signposts that “every purchase supports the museum and its mission to build understanding between cultures and a more-sustainable world”.

The museum adopted a new buying strategy – which focuses on sourcing more sustainably and supporting local artists and community groups, while maintaining affordable pricing – after a £15m redevelopment and the redesign of its retail space.

Emma Gittins, the museum’s head buyer and product developer, says: “We made the bold decision to drop most of our top-10 children’s products, which contained a high percentage of single-use plastic and excessive packaging.”

The gamble is paying off. “We have delivered the first partial year of trading on target, achieving £572,000 in net sales from February to December 2023,” says Gittins. “This is double the value of the last full year of trading in 2019.”

The average transaction value has increased from £8 to £11, while the spend per head has doubled to £1.

Sharing economy

One solution to over-consumption is not buying. Museums are participating in the sharing economy with schemes such as Museocycle, launched by Museum Development North West (which transitioned to Museum Development North in April). The recycling scheme encourages museums to donate unwanted display cases, storage and equipment to other museums, to avoid items going to landfill.

As a result of the scheme, exhibition frames from Manchester Museum found a new home in the Beatrix Potter: Passions in Paint exhibition at Armitt Museum in Ambleside last summer.

Alison Criddle, museum development adviser with environmental responsibility at Museum Development North, says: “Museocycle was a key strand of activity that we wanted to continue and further develop in our new partnership working across the north of England.”

The project came about at the same time as the environmentally driven Roots & Branches partnership project between Manchester Museum, The Carbon Literacy Project and Museum Development North West (MDNW), which was backed by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England.

Roots & Branches explored what it meant to be an environmentally responsible, socially just and climate-active space. It delivered practical help, such as a Carbon Literacy for Museums Toolkit, and encouraged experimentation.

Museocycle launched as a pilot project, initially for six months. The scheme had to be simple and accessible.

Bria Cotton, a former programme assistant at MDNW, says: “We wanted to take a streamlined, hands-off approach.” MDNW hosted Museocycle on its popular blog, posting listings and asking museums to email item details and contacts. Museums connected directly to retrieve the objects.

The success of Museocycle showed museums wanted to procure more robust materials sustainably and affordably. The experiment continued with a spin-off called Circulate, which included smaller items such as lanyards and notebooks.

Museocycle was focused on North West England, although Cotton received emails from farther afield.

“If this becomes a north-wide initiative, it’s going to be a real boon for connecting museums and creating that shared culture of sustainability,” Cotton says.

By weaving the Museocycle experience into Carbon Literacy training, Criddle hopes more museums will take practical action.

Telling museum visitors about repurposed signs or display cases might also influence them to think about their choices.

Food for thought

“We want colleagues to consider sustainability whenever they buy something,” says James Taljaard, head of trading at Watershed, a cultural organisation on Bristol’s harbourside.

A cross-department steering group, led by Watershed’s climate action researcher, Zoe Rasbash, reports monthly on issues ranging from sustainable procurement to travel, which helps to get everybody at the organisation on board.

Watershed takes an ethical approach to its food and beverage offerings. It seeks companies with sustainability statements and, wherever possible, buys locally, minimising the environmental impact and supporting the local economy. All of the beers and most of the spirits Watershed sells are from south-west England.

For example, it buys recyclable gin pouches from Bristol-based 6 O’clock Gin, because it takes less CO₂ to manufacture and distribute plastic pouches than glass bottles. Buyers such as Watershed decant the pouch into a bottle.

“When buying, we look at price and sustainability,” says Taljaard. Coffee may not grow in the south-west, but the organisations buys from a local coffee roastery and chooses Fair Trade items.

As Watershed is an independent organisation, it has greater agency around sustainable-purchasing decisions.

Taljaard says: “Running the cafe bar ourselves is extra work but means we control sustainability and environmental impact.”

“Is it sustainable?” is the question Watershed’s team constantly asks. “It’s not difficult,” says Taljaard. “It’s a state of mind.”

Juliana Gilling is a freelance writer