Meet UCL's first Sustainability Procurement Officer- Alex Jones

We are pleased to announce that we have a new member of the team, Alex Jones, who will be UCL’s first Sustainable Procurement Officer. Alex has a background in sustainability at Local Authorities and will be helping make procurement and purchasing of goods and services more sustainable across UCL.

As you can imagine, UCL purchases a lot of things, ranging from the ordinary (stationary and office equipment) to the extraordinary (3D printers and antibodies). Whatever the purchase, it should be a ‘responsible’ procurement.

If you are a UCL staff or student member who makes purchases and procurement choices, you should consider a number of things when buying your items. These include financial considerations such as initial cost, running costs, longevity and repairability, environmental issues including the amount of carbon emitted from the production process and  whether the materials used are sustainable e.g organic, plastic-free, recyclable or even better re-usable, and lastly made ethically so that workers in the production process have been paid a living wage and materials are sourced ethically e.g Fairtrade or from conflict-free areas.

Through our Sustainable Procurement Policy, UCL is committed to following this ethos. Alex will be developing this policy and helping to embed sustainable procurement into UCL. If you would like to learn how you can procure more sustainably in your area of work, then Alex would like to hear from you.

You can contact Alex via email at alexander.jones@ucl.ac.uk