LIFE

LIFE ENVIRONMENT |
LIFE and the circular economy
Opportunities in GPP
Public procurement contracts account for approx.
14% of European GDP. As a tool for changing methods
of consumption, green public procurement has
therefore the potential to play a key role in the circular
economy. The European Commission is developing
GPP criteria for priority product groups such
as transport, buildings and food & catering. They
can be used by public authorities on a voluntary
basis. The Commission plans to emphasise aspects
relevant to the circular economy, such as durability
and reparability, when setting out or revising
GPP criteria in future. It will also support greater
uptake of these criteria by public authorities and
consider how green public procurement could be
used more widely across the EU, in particular for
products or markets with high relevance for the circular
economy. Lastly, the Commission intends to
lead by example, by ensuring that GPP is used as
much as possible in its own procurement processes
and by reinforcing its use in EU funding.
The LIFE programme has financed projects which
provided guidelines and training for public authorities
on how to prepare calls for tender incorporating
GPP, including both GPPnet (LIFE02 ENV/
IT/000023) and its follow-up, GPPinfoNET (LIFE07
INF/IT/000410). The 2002 project created a GPP
LIFE+Ecoedicion developed criteria for producing more
sustainable printed material
Photo: LIFE08 ENV/E/000124
Photo: LIFE08 INF/IT/000312
Greening public procurement is essential for a more
sustainable EU economy
network among the province of Cremona and 13
of its municipalities, promoting concepts such as
closed-loop circles and developing guidelines on
how to prepare calls. The project encouraged the
development of criteria that take into account the
characteristics of a specific product/service along
its whole life-cycle.
GPPinfoNET expanded on this work by establishing
networks among the local public administrations
of nine regions - six in Italy, and one each in
Poland, Romania and Spain - with the aim of filling
in information gaps and sharing the solutions and
strategies necessary to overcome the obstacles to
implementing GPP. In particular, it promoted the Integrated
Product Policy (IPP) as a means of encouraging
the development of a market for more ecological
products and to raise consumer awareness.
The project also indicated the primary tools to be
used for promoting an IPP: ecolabels; Environmental
Product Declarations; and Environmental Management
Systems (EMAS or ISO 14001).
Another project, Leap (LIFE03 ENV/UK/000613)
developed a toolkit consisting of eight different
tools to help public authorities include environmental
criteria in their procurement procedures. In
addition, it produced criteria for evaluating building
materials in terms of environmental impact on a
scale from 1 to 5. This covered aspects such as
raw materials, the building phase, the use phase,
demolition and the interior environment.
The LIFE REBus project (LIFE12 ENV/UK/000608)
set out to demonstrate how sustainability can be incorporated
into procurement processes. Actions focused
on both the supply side (companies) and the
demand side (primarily government procurement) in
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