Purchases & procurement - resource consumption

If the only demand one puts during purchase is the price of the commodity or service, there are no incentives for the supplier to develop products with higher quality and less environmental impact. Therefore it is essential to put relevant environmental demands whilst carrying out purchases at the university, not least because the financier is the public. It is not very well-considered from a socio-economic perspective to spend public funding on the companies doing the least good for our public resources.

How big are the purchases at the university?

The public sector spends huge amounts of tax money each year. In addition research financiers contributes with private fundings. The total volume of purchase at the Gothenburg university year 2005 was SEK 840 million. The possibility to put demand in both price, quality, equity/fairness and environmental aspects are immense.

The work towards environmentally adapted purchases and procurements

The Swedish government has commissioned all public authorities to put environmental demands at all their procurements. Public purchase over certain amounts must be preceded by procurement. The point is to establish competition between suppliers and get a process with a high level of transparency. Some demands that one can put in public procurement is strictly regulated by the EU, via the Law of Public Procurement. This legislation certifies that public procurement is conducted professionally and that no irregularities are made. This includes the responsibility to make relevant and reasonable environmental demand.

It is the department of procurement that leads the task of environmentally adapted procurement at the university.