Greening Public Procurement: a review of the issues

Purchasing in the public sector differs in important ways from private sector procurement. Understanding how these differences affect the ‘greening’ of supply practice is important not just for the public sector itself, but also fir any attempt to develop explanations of how organisations in general make a link between what and how they buy and the impact of such purchasing on the environment. This paper summarises the key ideas in green supply and examines why public procurement has a particular relevance to this issue; analyses the issue of regulation and public accountability in relation to green supply; reviews the use of procurement as a tool for policy and explores the impact of budgeting systems and organisational design. The paper is based on: a review of literature on public procurement, drawn the USA and the UK and case studies of public sector organisations in local and national government – carried out by the authors as part of a research project on Greening of Supply Chains. For more details of the authors’ work on environmental management, contact Ken Green at the address given above.