The following report was prepared by the Agency for Renewable Resources (FNR), the Netherlands Standardization Institute (NEN) and Biomass Technology Group BV (BTG) and presents useful recommendations to overcome barriers for public procurement of Bio-Based Products and Services (BBPS), which were discovered during the 3-year project term of InnProBio. The focus of this document lies on four discovered barriers and respective recommendations to mitigate them.

The report contains a series of success stories on how public authorities have put socially responsible procurement into practice and raise awareness about global supply chain issues in numerous product lines.

This guide aims to present existing ways to combine fair trade with sustainable forest management certification. It provides examples from successful community forests and Fair Trade Organizations which have applied fair trade and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification at the forest and processing level or have fairly traded FSC certified community forest products.

This deliverable shows a state-of-the-art on green public procurement (GPP) and its implications related to the urban furniture sector.

Dutch national SPP criteria developed and run by NL Agency, part of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation.

For the English version, please visit http://www.agentschapnl.nl/en/onderwerp/criteria

This tender represents a model for fast IT renewal processes achieving remarkable energy savings

This paper examines governments’ efforts to use public procurement policy to promote the use of legal and sustainable timber, with the aims of reducing deforestation and illegal logging and encouraging sustainable forestry.

With an annual procurement budget of 10 million euro for furniture alone, the Swedish Region of Västra Götaland (VGR) is one of the country’s most significant purchasers. Its sustainability demands are therefore very influential on the market, which has responded positively over the years by developing new prototypes to meet accessibility and environmental needs (following eco-label requirements). VGR has been working with manufacturers and suppliers from the furniture and interiors sector since 2002 on improving sustainability requirements. This has resulted in the development of the Green List – a purchasing list in the form of a product catalogue presenting products that meet specific eco-label requirements. The approach has been widely consulted across Sweden and is in use by other municipalities in the Västra Götaland region. It has also served to boost knowledge and green ambitions in the furniture industry, and has played a strong role in advancing the environmental maturity of the market in Sweden. In 2012, VGR met their target of more than 50% of their volume of furniture purchases stemming from the Green List.

Ecolabel run by the European Commission. The only ecolabel to operate across the whole of the EU.