What is green procurement and why is it important?

The importance of using environmental and other sustainability criteria in procurement has been highlighted in many national and EU documents. Public procurement is one of the key tools to reduce hazardous substances from urban sources: Municipalities are large-scale purchasers of goods and services and are often responsible for a variety of public entities e.g. schools, pre-schools, care centres, traffic, construction, street and park management, etc. – all of them following public procurement rules.
Via clear criteria on HS within their Green Public Procurement (GPP) policy, municipalities can influence large scale purchasing patterns and reduce the amounts of products, articles and materials that contain hazardous substances. By offering a market for these new alternatives municipalities can also make them more economically affordable. Thus, they can have an impact on the market in general.