Sustainable Public Procurement: Towards a low‐carbon economy

17 Sustainable Public Procurement: Towards a low carbon economy
Multi- Stakeholder approach
There are two approaches as far as public purchasing in
sustainable goods are concerned: the top down and the bottoms
up approach. Some countries like Switzerland follow the latter
while most countries follow the former along with desk research;
the project adopted a multi stakeholder approach in order to
assess awareness, interests and concerns related to SPP.
A number of studies have focused on corporate efforts to
implement environmentally conscious manufacturing practices
as part of the broader strategies to improve business performance
and environmental outcomes. Porter (1991) contends that
impetus to innovate comes from the regulatory pressure as firms
respond environmental regulation by introducing innovations
that improve environmental outcomes. This is borne out by
studies such as Porter and van der Linde (1995a, 1995b). Another
group of studies (Gerorg, Ropke and Jorgenson 1992,) note the
relevance of organization factors to the adoption of
environmental innovations including recycling, pollution
prevention, and green product design. Some other studies link
the adoption of environmental practices to innovations in supply
chain management (Geffen and Rothenberg 2000, Hall 2000).
Therefore, more than a top down approach of a command and
control nature of a binding regulation, internalisation of
sustainability practices within an organization’s functioning has a
key role in determining the level of energy efficiency that can be
integrated with the public procurement process.
With this rationale, the approach of this project was to link policy
research with a multi-stakeholder approach. It was decided to
link with government agencies such as BEE (Bureau of Energy
Efficiency) and select public and private companies to assess
scope and implications of internalising sustainability criteria in
their procurement practices or see how can the procurement
process be carried out in a manner that contributes to energy
efficiency.
As a part of phase I of consultations, representatives from
materials/ stores department, environment, health and safety,
corporate social responsibility and TERI- Business Council for
Sustainable Development nodal persons were contacted through
phone and email to apprise them the project, its objective, scope
etc. This was followed by personal meetings with the concerned
representatives of the organization where procurement
processes, environmental policies and sustainability within their
T E R I Report No. 2007GL01