ICLEI celebrates 20 years of work on Sustainable and Innovation Procurement

This year, ICLEI is marking 20 years of work on sustainable procurement. The anniversary kicked off at a ceremony in Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum on 27 April, as part of the 8th European Conference on Sustainable Cities and Towns. The event also provided the opportunity to showcase the new-look SP Platform and the revamped Procura+ European Sustainable Procurement Network.

Over the last 20 years, through its activities on sustainable and innovation procurement, ICLEI has been involved in 150 projects; organised 100 conferences, seminars and workshops; trained over 2,000 people; supported 300 cities in more than 50 countries, and saved 1 million tonnes of CO2. Many ICLEI Members have been including sustainability criteria in their procurement policies and procedures to achieve resource efficient, low-carbon and socially responsible societies. ICLEI has also worked with sustainable procurement experts from cities across Europe on numerous projects and initiatives related to SPP.

These include specific initiatives such as installing 20,000 energy efficient light bulbs in Copenhagen (Denmark), broad policy aims such as Rotterdam’s (The Netherlands) commitment to 100 percent green procurement from 2015 onwards and European-wide initiatives such as the GPP 2020 project, which has brought together central purchasing bodies across Europe to achieve savings of over 900,000 tonnes CO₂e to date.

For more information, visit the SP Platform
Image copyright: Ihobe|Gobierno Vasco

GPP 2020 project tenders save equivalent of fifteen tankers worth of oil

The equivalent of over 900,000 tonnes of CO2 and 140,000 tonnes of oil has been saved through the green procurement activities of the EU-funded GPP 2020 project. The environmental savings equate to the amount of oil required to fill fifteen oil tankers.

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European Commission publishes third edition of Buying Green! Handbook

The new edition of the Buying Green! Handbook, the European Commission’s leading publication for assisting public sector entities to purchase goods and services that have a lower impact on the environment, has been published. The Handbook, now in its third edition, has been fully revised to detail the possibilities of how contracting bodies can put green public procurement (GPP) policies into practice under the 2014 Procurement Directives. Given the importance of public sector spending in Europe, GPP is an important tool to help achieve environmental policy goals relating to climate change, resource use and sustainable consumption and production.

Guidance is provided on how environmental considerations can be included at each stage of the procurement process within the revised EU legal framework, practical examples drawn from contracting authorities across EU Member States are presented, and sector specific GPP approaches for buildings, food and catering services, road transport vehicles and energy-using products are outlined.

The document has been written to also be of use to policy makers and companies responding to green tenders. The third edition of the Handbook has been compiled under contract between the European Commission and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, supported by Public Procurement Analysis (PPA).

For more information, visit the European Commission website.

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