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UNDP Practice SerieS

Practice Guide Volume 1

Environmental

Procurement

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Practice Guide Volume 1

Environmental

Procurement

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Graphic Design, Layout and Print Production:

Phoenix Design Aid A/S, Denmark. ISO 9001/ISO 14001/OHSAS 18001 certifed.

Printed on:

This publication is printed with vegetable-based printing inks on Cyclus Print.

Cyclus Print is a Nordic Swan approved totally chlorine ree paper, made o 100% recycled fbres.

The printed matter is recyclable.

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6EnvirOnmEntal PrOcurEmEnt / PracticE GuidE

Contents

ioo 1abo hs Ge 1

1 Ssbe Poee Wh s ? 2

2 Eoe o Gee Poee 4

2.1 Why should UNDP Procure Sustainable Products & Services? 4

What are the Benefts o Sustainable Procurement? 4

2.2 The UNDP Green Continuum 5

3 ipeeg Eoe Poee 8

3.1 Setting General Priorities For Environmental Procurement 8

3.2 Environmental Procurement Within The UNDPs Procurement Principles 9

3.3 Integrating Environmental Criteria In Bidding Document 9

Stages o Environmental Procurement 10

Procurement Planning 10

Developing Environmental Specifcations 12

3.4 Sourcing and Selecting Suppliers, Service Providers and Contractors 13

3.5 Evaluation o Quotations, Bids and Proposals 14

Examples o Lie-Cycle Costing to Promote Environmental Considerations 16

3.6 Contract Perormance Clauses 17

4 aex 18

4.1 Eco-Labels as Environmental Specifcations 18

What are Eco-Labels? 18

Using Eco-Label Criteria as a Basis or Technical Speciying 19

Type I Multiple Criteria Eco-Labels 19

Reerences 21

UNDP Practice Series, Environmental Procurement, September 2008

This Practice Guide is protected by international copyright laws. The prior written consent o UNDP Procurement Support

Ofce is required or the reproduction (in any orm) o the whole or any part o this Guide.

For urther inormation please contact UNDP Procurement Support Ofce, http://www.undp.org/procurement,

procurement.training@undp.org.

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1EnvirOnmEntal PrOcurEmEnt / PracticE GuidE 1EnvirOnmEntal PrOcurEmEnt / PracticE GuidE

IntroductionSustainable procurement involves improving the eciency o public procurement while usingpublic market power to bring about major environmental and social benets locally, regionally

and globally.

Communities all over the world are acing the dramatic consequences o climate change,

natural resource depletion, threats to biodiversity and increasing poverty. The current ocus on

a global climate change agreement, as highlighted by the 2007 United Nations Climate Change

Conerence in Bali, initiatives to address carbon emissions and general public recognition that

immediate action is required to address the potential risks posed by climate change. This

includes a change o practices and procedures across all levels o society and in the public and

private sectors.

While UNDP addresses a number o climate change issues across its thematic ocus areas,

these problems cannot be tackled without making a shit to more sustainable production and

consumption practices, and so procurement plays an important role.

Purchases which are good or the environment are also oten protable or the organization, as

resources saved translate into money saved.

Quality and the environment are oten closely linked, because quality usually means a longer

lie or the product and thus less consumption o resources. An eco-ecient product will oten

use less energy and represent lower costs as waste, either because it is included in a recovery or

re-use system or because it does not contain hazardous substances and will thus not be dened

as hazardous waste. When buying a product, we must consider more than the cost o acquiringit. Caculations o price must include all the costs relating to the product throughout its lie.

About this GuideThe practice guide has been designed to enable UNDP procurement practitioners to gain

an overview o sustainable procurement and how to take the rst steps to implement

environmental consideration within UNDPs procurement process. The guide provides a

brie background to sustainable procurement and introduces UNDPs gradual approach to theimplementation o the concept across the organization with the use o a green continuum and a

UNDP-specic product rating system.

The guide provides practical advice on how and where environmental interventions can

be integrated into the various stages o procurement process. This guide is supported with

supplementary environmental product services specications designed to assist the procurement

practitioner when drating specications and TORs. These will be updated and expanded on a

continual basis and will be available rom the UNDP/PSO website at www.undp.org/procurement,

as well as rom the UNDP intranet at http://practices.undp.org/management/procurement/.

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2 EnvirOnmEntal PrOcurEmEnt / PracticE GuidE

Sustainable Procurement What is it?Sustainable procurement plays a key role in contributing to sustainable development.

Sustainable development can be dened as:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs o the present without

compromising the ability o uture generations to meet their own needs.

(World Commission o Environment and Development/The Brundtland Commission)

Sustainable procurement means making sure that the products and services your organization

buys are as sustainable as possible with the lowest environmental and most positive social

impact.

Sustainable procurement is all about taking social and environmental actors into consideration

alongside nancial actors in making purchasing decisions. It involves looking beyond the

traditionaleconomic parameters and making decisions based on the whole lie cost, the

associated risks, measures o success and implications or society and the environment.

Making decisions in this way requires strategically setting environmental actors into a broader

procurement context that includes value or money, perormance management and corporate

and community priorities:

Value or money considerations such as, price, quality, availability, unctionality;

The entire lie cycle o products;

Environmental aspect the eects on the environment that the goods, services and civil

works have over the whole liecycle (green procurement); and

Social aspects, such as sustainable supply chains and the eects o issues such as labour

conditions, including child labour provision, occupational health and saety and compliance

with relevant industrial and environmental regulations.

Procurement can make a signicant contribution to the policy goals o sustainable development

and ecient resource usage by ensuring that the suppliers, contractors and the goods and services

purchased achieve optimum environmental perormance. In addition, sustainable procurement

plays a role in minimizing any reputation risk o social exploitation within the supply chain1.

Procurement provides an ideal mechanism that can be utilised to urther economic, social and

environmental development o recipient countries and/or regions. Sustainable procurement

seeks to incorporate a number o saeguards and checks in the procurement process that willassist in guarding against the inadvertent inringement o:

Labour rights

Adverse environmental impacts

Supporting local entrepreneurship

Gender and the empowerment o women

Poverty eradication

Governance

1

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Some acts

The most important environmental challenges in todays consumer society are:

Reducing the emissions o o greenhouse gases

Reducing the emissions o hazardous chemicalsAvoiding over-consumption o resources and limiting the volume o waste

Stopping depletion o the ozone layer

Saeguarding biodiversity

In procurement, it is thereore important to manage:

Consumption o raw materials and energy

Chemicals in products

Polluting emissions

Waste generation

Just as nature circulates in perpetual cycles, so must the products we manuacture, use, recycle and remanuacture. The

goal is a closed cycle with minimal consumption o energy and raw materials, negligible pollution and as little waste

as possible.Source: Nordic Council o Ministers www.norden.org

The products lie cycle

pollution

the productin use

the productas waste

the designphase

the manuacturingphase

energy & rawmaterials

non-recyclable waste

Vision:Closing the cycle

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4 EnvirOnmEntal PrOcurEmEnt / PracticE GuidE

Environmental orGreen ProcurementAlthough sustainable procurement encompasses more than environmental considerations, the

main ocus o this UNDP Practice Guide is environmental or green procurement. Currently

there are more inormation and more tools available to assist procurement units to procure

gre