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How Green is your Public Procurement ?

"Green public procurement means that public purchasers take account of environmental factors when buying products, services or works".
Green Public Procurement (GPP) Training Toolkit

The following presentation delivers an introduction into the concept of green public procurement (GPP); sets out the immense potential of GPP to improve environmental impacts of consumption and production patterns and provides examples of GPP implementation in practice.
Module 1 : An Action plan for GPP

Strategic and economic information on Green Public Procurement. The guidance sets out, robustly, a case as to why decision makers should set up a GPP strategy. It provides them with a simple yet effective methodology to develop an Action plan for gradually introducing Green Public Procurement within the organisation.

GPP Implementation Fact sheets:
Module 2: Legal module

The second module includes legal guidance, providing clear examples of how and where to integrate environmental criteria into the public procurement process whilst fully respecting European public procurement legislation (Directives 2004/17/EC and 2004/18/EC – more information at: http://simap.eu.int/).

The guidance follows the various stages of a public procurement lifecycle and explains how best to integrate environmental criteria at each stage:

  1. Definition of the subject matter
  2. Description of the minimum technical specifications which all bids need to comply with
  3. The selection criteria related to the capacity of bidders to perform the contract
  4. The award criteria on the basis of which the contracting authority will compare the offers
  5. The contract performance clauses to be included in the contract.

Because of its structure, this module can easily be adopted in a more general public procurement training course. It further clarifies and complements the guidance already provided by the Commission in its Handbook of 2004 -”Buying Green”.
Module 3 : Practical module

The third module is specifically designed for purchasing officers. It includes concrete examples of environmental criteria which can be readily introduced in tender documents. Examples of criteria have been established for 11 product and service groups identified (due to their environmental impact and/or scope for environmental improvement and/or financial impact and/or political or example-setting function) as most suitable for “greening” under Green Public Procurement.

The criteria have been established on the basis of broad stakeholder consultation and are, where appropriate, based upon European or, in the absence thereof, national environmental criteria and guidelines.

Criteria have been developed for products falling within the following product/service groups:

  1. Copying and graphic paper
  2. Cleaning products and services
  3. Office IT equipement
  4. Construction
  5. Transport
  6. Furniture
  7. Electricity
  8. Food and Catering services
  9. Textiles
  10. Gardening products and services
  11. Equipment used in the health sector (documents will be published in due course)