Samuel RETHORE (class of 1997)

How are you involved in your company's commitment? As founder of the Académie des achats, I've been personally involved in its commitment since its creation in 2008.The raison d'être of our group of experts in purchasing management is to support companies and public organizations in realizing the potential of their Purchasing function and optimizing its multiple performances: economic, environmental and social. "With great power comes great responsibility! "said Ben Parker (those in the know will remember...).
And it's with those who buy on a daily basis, in any professional sector of the public or private sector, that we work above all to find the best way to meet collective internal needs using the external resources of supplier markets.

On a personal level, what is your relationship with sustainable development? For almost 20 years now, I've been practicing strategic management of sustainable purchasing, and I share my know-how to make the people and organizations I work with more efficient and responsible, so that each of their purchasing decisions is a vector of economic, environmental and social progress. On a strictly personal level, when I had my first home built, our family specifications were more demanding than the French building regulations.glement thermique de la construction à l'époque (RT2012), because we knew that our home would be one of the main contributors to our family's carbon footprint, and we wanted to limit it from the outset.On a day-to-day basis, I've long since adopted a flexitarian eating style (a weekly plant-based diet with a few good animal-based dishes to indulge in from time to time;) having grown up in a small village of 220 inhabitants in Normandy, where we used to consume our own local produce (vegetables from the garden and surrounding farms, eggs and some free-range poultry...). The advantage is twofold: it's good for the planet and it's good for your figure... As far as my personal travel is concerned, I always take the train and urban public transport. As far as my family is concerned, once a year in general, but not necessarily every year, we take a family roadtrip in Europe to take the time to discover and appreciate the qualities of this vast world that we are striving to preserve...

What advice would you give to an EMien wishing to act in favor of sustainable development? First of all, train in responsible purchasing, because in business there are two worlds coming together: buyers and sellers. In my opinion, business schools are generally far too focused on sales, marketing, finance and so on. Purchasing is strategic for companies, and this awareness is fairly recent. Depending on the studies carried out, purchasing accounts for between 70% and 90% of an organization's environmental impact. As regulations evolve, the purchasing profession will become increasingly important, both in terms of jobs and the stakes involved...When we think about it in a little more detail, purchasing is also a way of approving and endorsing a proposed solution, of encouraging and supporting suppliers, whether manufacturers or distributors, to develop their activities through direct financing.

Purchases generate sales, and it is the sales revenue that finances the entire organization, R&D, use of materials, energy consumption, job creation and profits.
Buying without knowing your suppliers and their practices means encouraging, without necessarily knowing it, practices that are sometimes unacceptable: over-exploitation of resources, emissions of various types of pollution, non-compliance with labor regulations, unequal distribution of wealth...
Buying responsibly means looking at the value chain, asking for transparency on costs, anticipating or being patient rather than asking for express delivery, and accepting to pay the proposed price on time if it is justified. I invite all EMians to read and reread the United Nations MDGs, and especially No. 12 dedicated to purchasing, to learn how to act in favor of sustainable development...