The Greenwich Sustainable Procurement Officer

Hello! The Green Gnome has asked me to use this blog to introduce myself – my name is Abbie and I’m the new(ish)Sustainable Procurement Officer at the University!

Abbie Curtis - Sustainable Procurement Officer Extraordinaire

I started a few weeks ago after being given just one weekend notice between my interview and my first day! Since then it’s been a bit chaotic – trying to understand the University’s complex procurement processes and work out how to most effectively communicate sustainable procurement to the hundreds of people that are involved in procurement decisions across all three campuses, as well as the thousands of companies supplying the University. I’m based in the Procurement & Business Services department which means that as well as successfully embedding sustainable procurement (fingers crossed!) I can constantly annoy colleagues about one-sided printing and lights being left on – brilliant! At the moment I’m finalising our first Sustainable Procurement Policy & Strategy so have a look out for that on our Procurement & Business Services webpages soon.

Before joining the University of Greenwich on this temporary contract I worked at a corporate social responsibility (CSR) consultancy. I was involved in dozens of projects right across the spectrum of CSR and sustainability including community, employees, the environment and supply chain. In particular I was fascinated by the complexity, challenges and opportunities presented by global value chains.

City of Bath

I completed a masters in Business & Community at the University of Bath last Autumn and my dissertation was on the takeover of Cadbury Plc by Kraft last year – an excuse to do lots of research into chocolate! Aside from chocolate, my interests include being a closet twitcher (Avery Hill’s Green Woodpecker and dozens of Chaffinches being my campus favourites so far) and utilising the UK’s marvellous public transport to visit friends across the country. Last weekend I went to a Eurovision Party in sunny Bournemouth!

Green Gnome's favourite act from Eurovision 2011