Strengthening green public procurement through science-based support services

Public procurement has the greatest economic leverage for transforming product markets in Germany towards sustainability among all policy instruments in the domain of “sustainable consumption and production”. The OECD estimates the market volume of the public sector at around 15 % of the gross domestic product in Germany. If public procurement would pursue ambitious environmental standards, the market volume of the public sector could trigger a considerable steering effect to relieve the burden on ecological ecosystems.

This is where the project “Strengthening green public procurement trough science-based support services” comes into play. Its objective is, on the one hand, to increase the level of knowledge on the topic of green procurement in public procurement offices and simultaneously to highlight the importance of the topic for a sustainable economic transformation in Germany. On the other hand, ambitious ecological criteria catalogs and tendering recommendations for specific product groups will be developed and integrated into public procurement processes. In addition, a set of communication and information instruments to promote green public procurement will be revised and expanded, such as training scripts for public procurers or the further development of the German Environment Agency’s procurement portal. Public dialogues on the topic of green public procurement will be designed and carried out in order to further establish the topic in the procurement offices.