Sustainability Considerations For Procurement Tools And Capabilities

Federal laws, regulations, and executive orders have imposed requirements for federal agencies to move toward the sustainable acquisition of goods and services, including the incorporation of sustainable purchasing into federal agency decision making. Since the federal government is such a significant player in the market, its move to incorporate sustainable procurement practices could have a profound impact on the types of products being developed for the market as a whole. The General Services Administration (GSA) has played a key role in furthering sustainable procurement practices throughout the federal government. GSA is responsible for formulating and maintaining government-wide policies covering a variety of administrative actions, including those related to procurement and management. GSA has several ongoing activities related to sustainable procurement to assess the feasibility of working with the federal supplier community - vendors and contractors that serve federal agencies to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the supply chain while encouraging sustainable operations among suppliers. GSA has also been actively developing programs to assist federal agencies in making sustainable procurement decisions. As federal agencies cannot directly fund the development of sustainable procurement tools, they are particularly interested in understanding how to foster innovation and provide incentives for collaboration between developers and users of tools for sustainable purchasing throughout the supply chain. The training of procurement professionals is also a priority for these agencies. To assist efforts to build sustainability considerations into the procurement process, the National Research Council appointed a committee to organize a two-day workshop that explored ways to better incorporate sustainability considerations into procurement tools and capabilities across the public and private sectors. The workshop was designed to help participants assess the current landscape of green purchasing tools, identify emerging needs for enhanced or new tools and opportunities to develop them, identify potential barriers to progress, and explore potential solutions. The workshop provided an opportunity for participants to discuss challenges related to sustainable purchasing and to developing new procurement tools. Sustainability Considerations for Procurement Tools and Capabilities reviews the presenters' recommendations and tools currently used in sustainable procurement, such as databases for ecolabels and standards, codes, or regulations and other nontechnological tools such as policies, frameworks, rating systems, and product indexes.

The EU public procurement regime has recently undergone an overhaul and now allows Member States and their contracting authorities to pursue strategic goals via public procurement, including environmental and social objectives. The extent to which such interests may be accommodated in the procurement process is ultimately determined by the broader legal context in which the EU public procurement regime exists, which raises pressing questions regarding the scope and limits of Member States' discretion. This volume scrutinises these new legal acts – particularly Directive 2014/24/EU – focusing on discretion and engaging with questions central to the public procurement regime against the EU legal backdrop, including internal market law and environment law, as well as law beyond the EU.

Public Procurement accounts for 6.5 trillion euros annually and plays a fundamental role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. All public services and functions depend on public procurement to be delivered. This report aims to draw attention to the “added value” that sustainable public procurement can contribute towards these goals, directly or indirectly, going beyond delivering core public sector objectives. The report establishes clear linkages between Sustainable Public Procurement and the SDG targets, and aims to validate those linkages with specific and real-life case studies from Nordic settings.

Sustainable procurement is the pursuit of sustainable development objectives through the purchasing and supply process, while balancing environmental, social, and economic objectives. This book will help readers develop new contemporary knowledge about frameworks, innovative tools and techniques to achieve sustainability in public as well as private procurement practices. The book will enable scholars and practitioners working in the domain of sustainable procurement to improve the overall performance of the supply chain and further achieve UN SDGs, by making various decisions at the planning and strategic phase of the business. Features Discusses theoretical, decision making and related business management models Assists to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Provides qualitative/quantitative frameworks Covers quality innovations sustainability in sourcing Examines measurement drivers, indicators and metrics

The worldwide consumption of resources is causing environmental damage at a rate that cannot be sustained. Apart from the resulting environmental and health problems, this trend could threaten economic growth due to rapidly decreasing natural resources and the cost of addressing these issues. The public sector has a responsibility to stimulate the marketplace in favor of the provision of more resource-efficient and less polluting goods, services, and works in order to support environmental and wider sustainable development objectives. Green Public Procurement Strategies for Environmental Sustainability provides innovative insights on the adoption and implementation of green public procurement for sustainable practice in order to contribute to environmental protection. The content within this publication examines climate change, sustainable development, and document analysis and is designed for policymakers, environmentalists, managers, suppliers, development agencies, government officials, academicians, researchers, students, and professionals.

The business case for sustainability is clear and organizations are responding to the imperative to act. But with 50-70% of the change needed involving the supply base, procurement and supply chain functions are critical to success. Sustainable Procurement explains how procurement and supply chain professionals can develop existing best practice approaches to make supply side sustainability a reality. Based around the OMEIA® Sustainable Procurement process, this book provides a step-by-step and highly practical methodology that embeds sustainable procurement into existing proven procurement approaches. It also provides crucial new tools that equip and enable those in this field to drive highly effective supply-side sustainability. By exploring the current landscape and the business case for sustainability, Sustainable Procurement makes sense of how we can translate good ambition into prioritised grass roots level change. Guidance is offered on how procurement can help redefine what an organisation does based upon what needs to change in its supply base. There are extensive resources to help determine hot spot risk areas, assess suppliers, and determine and prioritise where to direct our precious resources. It also provides new models for 'sustainable value engineering' to help organisations transform what and how they buy. Written by leading procurement expert and best-selling author, Jonathan O'Brien, this practical guide outlines how to establish sustainable procurement as a key strategic enabler to reduce supply-side risk and drive action to respond to detrimental impacts in the supply base.

Public institutions, companies and governments in the EU and around the world are increasingly engaging in sustainable public procurement – a broad concept that must consider the three pillars of economic equality, social welfare and public health and environmental responsibility when designing public tenders and finalizing government contracts. This book contributes to the development of life-cycle criteria tools and methodologies for public procurement in the EU. It collects both sector-crossing contributions analysing the most relevant theoretical and legal aspects, including both EU law and contract theory, and sector-specific contributions relating to some of the most important sustainable goods and services markets. The book starts with a chapter that discusses the different approaches to including sustainability considerations in buying decisions by both private and public purchasers, and then goes on to examine the EU law on LCC and how it is implemented in different Member States. These chapters address the challenges in balancing economic and sustainability objectives under EU internal market law. One chapter develops the analysis with specific reference to public-private partnership. Another chapter elaborates how multi-stakeholders’ cooperation is necessary to develop LCC, based on a case study of a lighting services procurement. Three sector-specific studies relating to social housing, textile and clothing and IT close the book. With contributors from a range of backgrounds including law, business, management, engineering and policy development, this interdisciplinary book provides the first comprehensive study on LCC within the framework of EU public procurement law.

Green purchasing - or eco-procurement - by local and central governments has long been recommended in documents such as Agenda 21 to be a key - although sometimes supplemental-ingredient in the achievement of more environmentally responsible economies. Certainly, sustainable consumption cannot be considered a realistic goal without the full engagement of public authorities. Many initiatives have been undertaken in OECD countries, most successfully in Japan and Denmark where green public purchasing has been proven to be workable and highly effective, while, in other countries, city municipalities have successfully pioneered the development of sophisticated public environmental purchasing policies. However, for the vast majority of countries and their major cities, the potential for green public purchasing remains woefully untapped. A key question is what would be the environmental impact if the majority of cities in Europe replicated the success stories of those leading the way? Public procurement has, after all, been an important tool in achieving other public policy goals such as defence. Why should it not be used as a tool to defend the environment? The RELIEF project, funded by the EU's "City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage" programme was established to answer exactly this question: to define the true potential of eco-procurement and to develop a strategy for change in Europe. Buying into the Environment is the result of the research segment of the project which has now been completed. A further stage-to design a Europe-wide action plan will follow in 2004. The book, organised under the auspices of the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) analyses national approaches already tested, and provides in-depth surveys on the pioneer cities such as Hamburg, Malmo and Zurich. Serious attention is given to city-specific hurdles which have been faced and overcome. The most relevant product groups for eco-procurement such as construction, transport, energy, information technology, furniture and food. are also analysed. Uniquely, the book also provides calculations on the environmental benefits potentially achievable through greener purchasing. Tools were developed and tested by the RELIEF researchers on the environmental assessment of products, public buying power and on evaluations of market conditions in order to provide scenarios for the application of green purchasing at a European level. The conclusions are that there is huge potential for both local and central governments to adapt their behaviour patterns and purchase in a more environmentally responsible way. For example, 18% of the EU's Kyoto Protocol commitment could be achieved if major cities in the European Union purchased green electricity. The results are complemented by new ideas on how best to foster innovation in public contractual arrangements-to encourage the development of products such as super-energy-efficient computers and fuel cells-and how the legal system may require adaptation and reform. The results presented in this book will provide an indispensable resource for municipalities, governments, researchers and business practitioners looking for answers on how public procurement can have a fundamental and manifestly positive effect on the environment.