EPA Research Seminar: Green Public Procurement

Public procurement is a powerful market force, with an estimated spend of €1.8trillion across the EU accounting for 14% of EU GPP, in Ireland public procurement accounts for 10-12% of GDP.

Green Public Procurement offers public bodies the means to lead sustainable development in their sector, educating suppliers to reduce the environmental impacts across their product and service life cycles; developing the circular economy.

The Climate Action Plan requires every public body to have a climate mandate: With many public bodies already leading by example in energy efficiency; green procurement is a way to further reduce emissions and deliver on the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Goals for participants

• Join public networks and participate in the continual improvement of resource efficiency action plans, energy and environmental management systems
• Measurably reduce environmental impacts using EU Green Public Procurement Guidelines
• Secure funding where available towards your organisation’s purchases
• Practical
• Spreadsheet templates provided to allow participants generate a working template for one aspect of their procurement e.g. transport services

On completion participants will be able to:

• Review their organisations’ environmental impacts at a high level
• Focus on areas of significance
• Research the market, identify suitable criteria
• Apply EU GPP Guidelines to scoring and specification
• EPA Green Public Procurement Guidelines for the Public Sector
• Measure the impacts, to continually improve
• Create their own templates for green public procurement