Municipalities across Europe spend hundreds of billions of Euros each year on purchasing goods and services. Much of this procurement is undertaken without consideration of environmental impacts - in spite of the fact that procurement carries with it one of the largest environmental impacts of any municipal activity. Without controlling this environmental impact, municipalities are unlikely to meet their aspirations for a better local environment.

There are a number of steps that can be taken to reduce the environmental footprint of procurement:

• In major service contracts specifications can demand best practice environmental performance. This can apply to processes as well as materials used. Typical services with a high environmental impact are construction and building services, public transport services, highways maintenance, waste management, parks and open space management - for more information click here.
• Where goods or services are bought, specifications can be benchmarked against best European environmental practice. Areas of particularly high environmental impact include energy, transport, food and chemicals.
• By making procurement staff aware of latest developments in green procurement policy and practice throughout Europe, best practice can be gradually introduced;
• Procurement is a systematic process. It therefore lends itself well to be dealt with through a management system. By using an environmental management system, environmental impacts arising can be systematically dealt with.
• Procuring jointly with other municipalities can help generate demand for environmentally more sustainable products. With sufficient volumes, it can also help to drive down prices.

Global to Local has six years experience of involvement in green public sector contracts and procurement of goods and services.

• We provide consultancy advice on greening key public sector contracts such as parks and open space management, waste management, highways maintenance, transport and fleet management;
• We provide training for local authority staff on greening contracts;
• We provide European best practice advice on a range of goods and services purchased by local authorities (such as electricity purchasing, paper and stationery).
• We help establish purchasing networks and consortia to enable local authorities to work in partnership to purchase environmentally sustainable goods at an economic level
• We help ensure that green purchasing procedures are ingrained in a local authority through development of environmental management systems.

To see the procurement projects that G2L has worked on, click here.

If you want to find out more, visit the European Commission’s website to see the “Interpretative Document” on public procurement and the environment. A good summary of procurement considerations in the UK can be found from the IDeA’s website.