Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A university procurement office cites SPLC's Laboratory Supplies and Services guidance when drafting sustainability evaluation criteria into an RFP for a lab consumables or reagents supplier contract.
- Is an instance
A hospital system's or research institution's sustainability office holds SPLC institutional membership to access category guidance and peer benchmarking data, then applies SPLC's laboratory-category criteria when scoring competing bids for cold-storage equipment.
- Is an instance
A research-purchasing team completes an SPLC training course and cites SPLC's published guidance documents as the basis for a supplier code of conduct covering laboratory consumables.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A single principal investigator's lab that switches to an ENERGY STAR-rated freezer or shuts down unused equipment on its own initiative is not 'using SPLC guidance' — that is lab-level practice change, not an institutional procurement policy informed by SPLC's category criteria. It sits under lab-level programs such as Green Lab Certification or My Green Lab rather than SPLC's purchasing-policy scope.
- Not an instance
A supplier claiming to be 'SPLC-certified' is describing something SPLC does not offer; SPLC develops guidance and runs training and peer-learning programs, it does not certify products, suppliers, or individual laboratories the way a scheme like My Green Lab Certification does.
Editorial commentary
What SPLC is and isn’t
The Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council (SPLC) is a nonprofit membership organization made up of purchasers, suppliers, advocates, and sustainability experts working to embed sustainability criteria into institutional procurement. It has operated for over a decade and remains active, publishing category-specific guidance, running training and peer-learning programs (including peer learning circles and sector-specific initiatives such as its healthcare-focused CHARME collaborative), and maintaining a glossary of sustainable procurement terminology.
For research-intensive institutions, the relevant entry point is SPLC’s Laboratory Supplies and Services guidance category, one of roughly a dozen category-specific guidance areas SPLC maintains alongside categories such as electronics/IT hardware, furnishings, food services, cleaning and disinfection, paper products, transportation and fuels, and professional services. The laboratory category addresses the sustainability impacts specific to research-lab purchasing — consumables and reagent packaging, ultra-low-temperature freezer and analytical-instrument energy consumption, hazardous-material substitution, and supplier take-back or disposal programs — and offers prioritized strategies for procurement staff who may not otherwise have sector-specific sustainability criteria to work from.
Why procurement officers reference SPLC
Research-institution procurement offices and sustainability programs cite SPLC for the same reason they cite other standards and guidance bodies referenced elsewhere on this site: it gives them externally developed, peer-reviewed criteria rather than criteria written from scratch in-house. Referencing SPLC’s laboratory category guidance in an RFP, supplier scorecard, or purchasing policy signals that sustainability criteria were drawn from a recognized external source, which matters both for internal governance (defensible, consistent criteria across purchasing categories) and for institutional sustainability reporting, where scope-3 procurement emissions are frequently the largest single category for a research institution.
SPLC vs. lab-level certification schemes
SPLC guidance operates at the level of institutional purchasing policy and supplier evaluation — it shapes what an RFP asks for or what criteria a scorecard weighs. It is distinct from lab-level certification schemes such as My Green Lab Certification, which audits and certifies an individual laboratory’s operational practices (equipment shutdown behavior, chemical inventory management, freezer temperature setpoints, and similar). A research institution can use SPLC guidance to write its procurement policy while individual labs separately pursue green lab certification for their own operations; the two are complementary rather than substitutes, and neither one implies the other. See also the broader concept of sustainable procurement in research, which covers the wider set of frameworks (such as ISO 20400) that SPLC guidance sits alongside.
References
- Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council, splc.org — organizational overview and Laboratory Supplies and Services guidance category.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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