How to integrate a regenerative economy into your procurement to create a positive impact?

Summary

The regenerative economy represents a major evolution beyond CSR and the circular economy. For businesses, it opens a new operational framework: moving from the logic of reducing negative impacts to creating measurable net positive impacts. For purchasing managers and senior leaders, this translates concretely into supplier policy, selection criteria and performance indicators. Understanding this economic model also means anticipating growing regulatory requirements and strengthening supply chain resilience.

Table of Contents

• What is the regenerative economy? Definition and context
• Why is the regenerative economy becoming a strategic issue for leaders?
• How to translate the regenerative economy into your procurement policy?
• What return on investment can you expect from a regenerative procurement policy?
• How to engage your teams and suppliers in a regenerative approach?

 

Companies are now seeking to go beyond simply reducing their environmental footprint. CSR and the circular business models have laid solid foundations, but a new economic model is progressively establishing itself: the regenerative economy. This framework offers a concrete operational logic for procurement policy, provided businesses move beyond mere compliance. The central question becomes: how can each purchasing decision be transformed into a lever for creating measurable environmental and social value, rather than simply responding to regulatory constraints?

What is the regenerative economy? Definition and context

The regenerative economy refers to an economic model whose objective is to actively restore ecosystems and living systems, rather than simply maintaining their current state. Where sustainable development seeks to preserve, the regenerative economy seeks to improve: rebuilding soils, regenerating biodiversity, strengthening social bonds and equitably redistributing value created within territories.

This economic model rests on three founding principles: restoring the natural resources mobilised by economic activities, redistributing benefits towards communities and territories, and regenerating the ecosystems affected by production and consumption.

From CSR to the circular economy: a progression towards net positive impact

The progression is organised into three distinct tiers. CSR first seeks to reduce the negative impacts of businesses on their environment. The circular economy takes a further step by avoiding waste and extending the lifespan of resources. The advantages of the circular economy for businesses are today well documented and provide a solid foundation for progress. The regenerative economy goes further still: it produces a measurable net positive impact on ecosystems and communities, beyond simply maintaining the status quo.

Regenerative vs sustainable: why the distinction changes everything for your business

The term “regenerative” describes any system, product or practice that actively contributes to rebuilding the natural and social resources it draws upon. “Sustainable” means maintaining what already exists within the current economic system. “Regenerative” means improving the state of living systems, not merely conserving them.

For a business, the operational implications are fundamental: a regenerative purchase does not simply limit negative impacts. It produces measurable environmental value, whether through the restoration of local ecosystems, the strengthening of biodiversity, or the creation of more balanced social and economic conditions among suppliers.

Why is the regenerative economy becoming a strategic issue for leaders?

The regenerative economy is no longer a voluntary approach reserved for pioneering businesses. It responds to growing institutional, competitive and operational pressures. For senior leaders, adopting a regenerative model within the procurement policy represents a strategic response to three levers of competitiveness: regulatory compliance, brand image and supply chain resilience.

CSRD, duty of care and extra-financial reporting: the regenerative economy as a regulatory shield

The CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive)[1] requires European businesses to produce detailed extra-financial reporting, including the environmental and social impacts of the supply chain. Indirect procurement is now explicitly within the scope of this reporting.

Equivalent obligations exist outside the European Union. In the United Kingdom, the Modern Slavery Act[2] and the FRC Stewardship Code[3] govern corporate responsibility across the supply chain. In Switzerland, the Ordinance on Climate Reporting imposes a similar duty of transparency. In Norway, the Transparency Act[4] requires businesses to account for their human rights practices among their suppliers. Embedding regenerative principles into the procurement policy enables businesses to construct a documented and coherent response to all of these requirements.

Supply chain resilience: reducing dependence on natural resources through procurement

The degradation of natural resources directly undermines the availability of raw materials. Soil health, biodiversity and the integrity of natural ecosystems condition the supply of goods and services across sectors as varied as agriculture, packaging and industrial component manufacturing. The nine planetary boundaries defined by the Stockholm Resilience Centre now constitute a reference framework for assessing business exposure to these systemic risks, from climate change to biodiversity loss.

Diversifying towards suppliers with regenerative practices concretely reduces the volatility of purchasing costs. For senior leaders, this is a supply chain risk management logic before it is a CSR approach. Sustainable finance frameworks increasingly recognise supply chain resilience as a material financial risk, reinforcing the business case for regenerative economics in procurement strategy.

How to translate the regenerative economy into your procurement policy?

The regenerative economy only creates value when it is translated into concrete criteria within procurement processes. For the purchasing manager, the transformation requires a structured roadmap, category by category, and a redefinition of supplier evaluation criteria.

Where to begin: prioritising your highest-impact procurement categories

The prioritisation logic recommends beginning with indirect procurement, known as long tail spend, which concentrates the greatest number of suppliers and offers the greatest sourcing flexibility. These are also the purchases most readily redirectable towards regenerative practices.

Categories with high regenerative potential include in particular:

• Packaging (bio-sourced, recycled, reusable materials);
• Office supplies and consumables;
• PPE sourced from certified supply chains;
• Furniture with documented longevity and proven repairability.

Integrating regenerative criteria into circular procurement represents a natural first step in structuring this transition without disrupting the existing procurement organisation.

Evaluating suppliers with a regenerative framework: longevity, repairability, territorial roots and value sharing

Four concrete criteria enable a supplier to be evaluated according to the principles of regenerative economics.

• Product longevity: documented lifespan, extended warranty and component traceability.
• Repairability: availability of spare parts and existence of an active repair network.
• Territorial roots: short supply chains, reduced transport emissions, contribution to the preservation of local soils and biodiversity.
• Value sharing: working conditions of subcontractors and equitable redistribution towards local actors.

Industrial symbiosis represents a concrete regenerative practice: by valorising one company’s waste as resources for another, it reduces impacts on the environment whilst creating new local economic activities.

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“A responsible procurement approach consists, for buyers, of reconciling three essential challenges: the environment, ethics and society, as well as the economy. Several major benefits can be identified: better risk management, cost reduction, fostering innovation and differentiation, increasing turnover and improving procurement performance indicators.” – Ludivine MARTINET (Commercial Director 2021–2024, Manutan), 20 September 2022, Webinar “Long tail spend: how to implement a responsible procurement strategy”, Manutan, 45 min.

What return on investment can you expect from a regenerative procurement policy?

Changing to a regenerative economy is often perceived as generating additional costs. This perception inverts reality: a regenerative procurement policy produces structural savings, reduces exposure to financial risks and generates indicators that can be directly integrated into existing reporting systems. Regenerative economics demonstrates that restoring natural capital ultimately reduces costs across the value chain.

KPIs and tracking indicators to measure the impact of your regenerative procurement

Measuring the impact of a regenerative approach requires indicators adapted to the reality of procurement. The recommended KPIs are as follows:

• Rate of suppliers evaluated on regenerative criteria (longevity, repairability, territorial roots);
• Share of purchases sourced from territorial circuits or certified supply chains;
• Rate of products with documented longevity in the procurement portfolio;
• Volume of waste avoided by category through regenerative purchasing decisions;
• Scope 3 carbon footprint[5] of indirect procurement, including greenhouse gas emissions linked to suppliers.

These indicators integrate naturally into CSRD reporting and into existing CSR dashboards, without creating significant additional workload for teams.

The hidden costs of inaction: regulatory non-compliance and reputational risks

The absence of a regenerative approach to procurement generates real costs, often underestimated by senior management. On the regulatory front, failure to meet extra-financial reporting obligations exposes businesses to increasing sanctions across all European countries. On the commercial front, both public and private finance increasingly conditions award criteria on documented and measurable CSR commitments. Green finance frameworks are also creating new expectations for businesses to demonstrate regenerative economics in practice.

Economic activities dependent on biodiversity are particularly exposed: the degradation of soils and natural systems can disrupt entire supply chains in the short term. Unmanaged greenhouse gas emissions expose businesses to structural reputational risks, making it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain human capital in an increasingly competitive environment.

How to engage your teams and suppliers in a regenerative approach?

The transition towards regenerative procurement cannot rest on the purchasing manager alone. It requires alignment of internal teams and a progressive upskilling of suppliers. Training staff in regenerative principles, sharing a common vision and co-building progression objectives are the pillars of a sustainable deployment within the business.

Co-building the approach with key suppliers: from evaluation to partnership

The transactional buyer-supplier logic reaches its limits when it comes to restoring ecosystems and producing lasting positive impact. The transition to impact-oriented partnership within a regenerative economic system requires concrete steps:

• Sharing the regenerative evaluation framework with strategic suppliers from the integration phase onwards;
• Co-defining annual progression objectives on priority regenerative criteria;
• Organising supplier reviews incorporating social and economic indicators alongside conventional performance indicators.

Co-building strengthens supplier loyalty and reduces the risk of supply chain disruption by anchoring the relationship in a shared vision of ecosystem and living systems restoration. This human dimension of the regenerative approach is as important as the environmental and finance dimensions.

Leveraging an expert distributor to accelerate your transition towards responsible procurement

Relying on a distributor that has already filtered its catalogue according to eco-responsible criteria significantly reduces the supplier qualification workload. Each product identified as eco-responsible meets objective, verifiable criteria that can be directly integrated into the extra-financial reporting of a regenerative business in transformation.

Eco-responsible offer

At Manutan, an eco-responsible product is one that carries a recognised environmental label (e.g. EU Ecolabel, Ecocert, PEFC, etc.), and/or is manufactured from at least 25 % recycled materials, and/or is second-hand (used or refurbished). Available in Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Portugal, as at date of content publication.