Although public authorities in Germany have been taking environmental aspects into account in tendering for a long time, the topic of green public procurement (GPP) is still not anchored in the professional education of civil servants. ICLEI and Öko-Institut teamed up and developed a tailor-made training concept for these training academies and carried out eight train-the-trainer workshops in 2012.

The project was supported by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) and the Ministry for Environment (BMU). Setting landmarks introduced concepts and methods for implementing GPP in practice and introducing GPP into the curricula by providing training to several training academies, including the teachers at the Public Authority School Bremen and the Competence Centre for Sustainable Procurement at the Ministry of Interior.

Key topics addressed included how to use the pre-procurement phase to work with the market on green products and services and how to use environmental criteria at the tendering process. Setting landmarks also developed an online tool for procurers for the assessment of life cycle costs and related emissions such as CO2, nitrogen dioxides and particulate matters. The tool is available online and can be used free of charge.

For more information, click here. (in German)