To facilitate the selection of products that involve lower levels of negative environmental, economic and social impact across their supply chain including extraction, processing and manufacture.

• Promote more economically, socially and environmentally responsible practices across the construction products, component manufacturing and supply sectors.
• Encourages the construction industry to identify risks and reduce the environmental, economic and social issues in the supply chain of construction products.
• Encourages the use and the improvement of credible and comparable schemes to evaluate the responsible sourcing of products.

Most construction products involve long and complex supply chains that result in a wide range of impacts locally and globally. These might include environmental (e.g. toxicity or biodiversity), economic (e.g. corruption) or social (e.g. slave labour, equality) issues and can occur during the extraction, processing, manufacturing or supply chain stages. The increasing globalisation of supply chains increases the difficulty of tracing the supply chain and mitigating negative impacts caused by it.

Credible certification schemes exist to increase confidence to specifiers that risks are being minimised or avoided and their use ensures that specifiers are able to demonstrate the responsible nature of their selection decisions.