Good practice:

Green Public Procurement guidelines of Hamburg

Public authorities have a high purchasing power. This should be used to buy sustainable products. GPP is a great tool to support the transition to greener products and production processes. The city of Hamburg developed GPP guidelines covering 20 different product groups.

Within the project PLASTECO which focuses on a “New Plastics Economy”, this GPP guidelines were identified as a good practice including several criteria on this topic.
New Plastics Economy aims to avoid plastics where it is not needed and to reuse / recycle plastics. In other words, A New Plastics Economy is a circular economy for plastic in which it will not become waste.

Here are some examples from the GPP guidelines of Hamburg which generate less plastic waste:
• Cleaning agents free of microplastics
• Garbage bags with the German Ecolabel “Blue Angel” made out of recycled plastics
• Wax crayons without plastic capsule
• Plastic used for glue sticks need to be 65% recycled content (or biobased with 50% renewable resources)
• Prohibition of disposable tableware (incl. cups) and cutlery
• Tab water in carafes need to be offered

The main target group of these guidelines are the public procurement officers of the city of Hamburg. However, the guidelines can also inspire other federal states, municipalities and public companies. By implementing certain guidelines, the beneficiaries are the environment as well as companies who produce these types of sustainable products.

The guidelines were developed with external support, so budget is need for this. In addition, human resources from the authority are required for the develop and permanent implementation phase (e.g., for training courses for PP officers, promotion and revision of the guidelines).

As the guidelines were passed in the senate of Hamburg and are mandatory, they are an effective and successful tool to support the purchase of greener and circular products and also to avoid certain products (e.g., disposable plastic items).

The city of Hamburg can report several success stories. For instance, companies transformed their printing processes in order to meet the requirement of the Ecolabel Blue Angel / the GPP guidelines for environmentally friendly printed matters.

In general, the authority needs motivation and capacity to develop and implement such guidelines. The authority of Hamburg underlined the needed effort to raise awareness among the purchase officers and recommended participation processes already during the development phase of the guidelines.

These GPP guidelines have a high potential to be a good practice for other regions and to inspire authorities to strengthen the topic of GPP in general and in relation to plastic waste in particular.

Of course, the guidelines cannot directly transfer to other regions in Europe, as each country and each municipality has different purchasing rules. However, certain concrete examples could be used when developing regional or local GPP guidelines.