ORGANICS BOOST ECO-EFFICIENCY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS

Report by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI)

Purchasing organic food for consumption in public canteens would reduce damage to European soils and waters by an equivalent of over 3,500,000 inhabitants, conclude researchers of the EU research project RELIEF. The project aims to provide easy-to-use guidelines for local authorities to adopt a more environmentally friendly approach to public procurement.

Summary

Public Procurement in Europe adds up to some 15% of total gross national product. It therefore offers a big potential to sustainable production, closing material cycles and avoiding waste. For this reason, authorities have been developing "green" procurement practices for more than 20 years. However, despite the strategic potential, the innovations triggered in the economy still appear to be marginal. A European strategy is missing and the potential environmental relief of green purchasing has, until now, not been calculated.

The RELIEF project aims to close this data gap and to develop a set of policy tools to implement a European strategy. The central idea in this is that quantifiable figures make it possible to focus on priorities, which can then be applied by authorities throughout Europe. Strategically, joining purchasing power will achieve not only marginal changes but shifts on the supply-side of the market toward sustainability.

The project can roughly be divided into a scientific phase and an implementation-oriented phase. The first phase will develop methods and carry out assessments and calculations, while the latter phase will develop, discuss and implement policy recommendations.

The scientific phase will start with an international survey on national approaches, followed by in-depth surveys on the pioneer cities. The information gathered at this stage - including an analysis of city-inherent hurdles - will serve as a reference source, focusing particularly on the most relevant product groups.

RELIEF will develop an extensive set of data on the environmental benefits which are potentially achievable through green purchasing. For this purpose methods will be developed on environmental assessment of products, assessment of public buying power and evaluation of market conditions. Based on the local case studies and priority identification by the pioneer cities, scenarios will be developed for the application of green purchasing at a European level and the environmental effects of this will be calculated. The results of this will be combined with a research on innovation fostering contractual arrangements (performance criteria in tendering, contracting, ...) and a legal analysis.

The implementation phase will start with developing draft policy recommendations and tools. Recommendations for urban environment policies, product policies and trade and internal market policies will be addressed to the European level. The purchasing in public authorities will benefit from the draft (or if appropriate, redraft) of European purchasing guidelines.

The draft documents will be discussed in multi-stakeholder roundtables, which will result in the set up of a strategy for a "cities for green purchasing campaign". The project results will then be widely implemented through the cumulative action of cities across Europe.

To have a realistic chance to achieve a tangible improvement of the green purchasing practice, the project is based on the experiences already existing in European local authorities and the research knowledge of six of the most profiled European research institutions in the field (see names mentioned on the first page of this brief).

The project's outcomes during the three years of implementation will include an international survey on national procurement practices, six city-specific Urban Priority Reports, the calculated costs and benefits of green purchasing for high-priority product groups, a sample of instruments triggering product innovation, a number of policy recommendations and European green purchasing guidelines, a trade code of orientation and the toolkit for a "Cities for Green Purchasing Campaign".