Drawbacks and opportunities of green public procurement: an effective tool for sustainable production

Abstract

As “green public procurement” (GPP) is playing an increasingly important role in stimulating the demand for environmentally friendly products and services, there is a strongly emerging need to analyze which factors drive the inclusion of environmental criteria in public tenders. Working on data from Italian municipalities, our statistical analysis confirmed that intensifying information and raising awareness on GPP techniques can strongly support the development of public green tenders. Moreover, our work reveals that good GPP performance cannot be achieved through the mere adoption of a certified Environmental Management System (EMS) by a public authority alone, but rather through the level of maturity of the certified EMS that provides a growing “value added” to GPP practices. Finally, findings of this study demonstrate that the relevant limitations linked to the small size of public authorities can be overcome by the progress in GPP brought by several European, national and local supporting initiatives

SPP Toolbox: Supporting Sustainable Public Procurement in the Context of Socio-Technical Transitions

“…Change agents refer to willingness to change, motivation, ambition, commitment and the role of individuals as champions, facilitators and leaders [5,14,16,24,26,30,45,46,60,61] and are developed in Step 1, while defining the responsible team. Change agents are then further operationalized in the "people" dimension of the SPP Diagnosis Matrix, which involves the definition of targets related to personnel performance indicators (Step 2), action plan definition (Step 3) and implementation of the action plan (Step 4).…”

“…Change agents are then further operationalized in the "people" dimension of the SPP Diagnosis Matrix, which involves the definition of targets related to personnel performance indicators (Step 2), action plan definition (Step 3) and implementation of the action plan (Step 4). The "knowledge" key factor, which accounts for skills and training [1,5,16,18,20,43,45,46,61,62], is also developed in a similar way in the "people" dimension of the SPP Diagnosis Matrix.…”

“…These steps fully operationalize the procurement strategy, allowing alignment with the corporate strategy and the development of an internal vision for solving societal problems [14,17]. The key factor "internal change" is related to the promotion and management of a flexible organizational structure [5,15,26,30,45] and it is therefore developed within the definition of the responsible team, in Step 1, which involves creating an adaptation group to facilitate the process of change. Internal collaboration concerns the promotion of relationships between the organization's various departments [5,14,45] and it is applied while defining the relevant actors, in Step 1 and stakeholders and resources, in Step 3.…”

“…In other words, public procurement can shape production and consumption towards more sustainable trends [1], by stimulating innovation in the value chain and promoting the diversification of the products and services mix [4,5].…”

Qualification Requirements for Foreign Suppliers in Public Procurement – Evidence from the Czech Republic

“…In addition, their results show that commitment to change acts as a mechanism that fits in with the vision and attitude of ecological sustainability, procedural justice and sustainable procurement behaviour. The findings of a study by Testa et al (2016) 9 demonstrate that the relevant limitations linked to the small size of public authorities can be overcome by progress in GPP brought about by several European, national and local supporting initiatives. SMEs and their access to PP is another topic of significant interest to authors.…”