According to Procurement Leaders’ Strategic Planning Guide 2026, sustainability has dropped down the list of priorities of global procurement organisations.
The reasons are manifold – political pressures and economic realities being the most obvious, but a relentless focus on the potential of artificial intelligence is also high on the list. With limited resource, CPOs have no choice but to make sacrifices and 2026, it would seem, is the year when sustainability will suffer.
Or will it?
While there are doubtless headwinds and increased friction to cope with, meeting with Bertrand Conqueret, Henkel’s CPO and president of global supply chain, and the leadership team of the Sustainable Procurement Pledge (SPP) last week provided a reminder of just how much energy and passion there is among the procurement community to make progress on sustainability.
Bertrand is a cofounder of the SPP, along with Aldi chief commercial officer Thomas Udesen, and has just taken on the additional responsibilities for sustainability at Henkel. He has long pushed the agenda for sustainable procurement and put his head above the parapet to demand action from his peers.
We discussed the SPG data and a debate began on whether it reflected reality. Summarising that discussion isn’t easy, but a couple of takeaways worth sharing are a notable increase in pragmatism among procurement executives, as well as a firm need to view sustainability through a value-creation lens.
The discussion reminded me of a session at our CPO thinktank Ovation in 2024, where London Business School professor Alex Edmans talked about his theory of “rational sustainability”; arguing sustainability goals need to be focused on long-term sustainable value, not political objectives or box-ticking.
The second is a piece written by my colleague Münür Münüroglu, who leads our Sustainability Leaders community, in his newsletter for chief sustainability officers.
“The era of ‘loud ambition’, with its flashy 2030 pledges and PR-driven commitments, is being replaced with one of pragmatic value creation,” he wrote. “The conversations I have with many CSOs reflect this shift. The ‘why’ is settled; the ‘how’ is what matters now. This year won’t be defined by new targets, but by important, if unglamorous, work in areas such as improving data integrity, building supply chain partnerships and delivering a financial return on sustainability.
So, 2026 might not be glamorous, but sustainability in procurement will remain a critical ingredient of a CPO’s functional strategy.
