Public procurement can contribute significantly to achieving sustainable development. The Dutch government has indicated that sustainable procurement is one of its priorities and has developed and installed a Sustainable Public Procurement Programme (SPPP). This essay reviews the current programme and assesses its actual contribution to sustainable development. Specific questions are raised with respect to both the set up and the content of the current decision criteria for supplier selection and contract provisions. This article argues that, so far, the focus on minimum requirements, the strict distinction between environmental and social criteria and the absence of specific long-term ambitions and a systems perspective have limited the actual contribution of the Dutch SPPP to sustainable development. Finally, ongoing discussions by involved stakeholders, with respect to suggested adjustments to the programme, are reviewed and linked to the assessment presented here. It is concluded that these discussions reflect promising trains of thought for the future of the Dutch SPPP.
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This report summarizes the work done by Thematic Working Group 4 (TWG4) on “Procurement and Tendering” for e-bus deployment. It further analyses the various Good Practices collected by project partners with a reference to the above aspects. This report takes the policy learning one step further and sheds light on regional similarities and differences in practices that have been found functional and worth spreading.
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Authorities aim at making the urban freight system more sustainable. The most common instruments to do so are regulation or stimulation of good practices, by offering subsidies or initiating projects together with the private parties that are responsible for actually performing urban freight transport operations. This contribution examines the possibilities for (local) authorities to use their market role, i.e. being a big procurer of goods and services in a city that result in many urban freight transport trips, to stimulate more sustainable urban freight transportation. Procurement is usually not linked to transport and data from procured goods and services do not provide sufficient insights to estimates the impacts of deliveries and trips related to the procured goods and services. This contribution discusses two cases in which (local) authorities try to make the urban freight transport that results from their procurement activities visible, via different methods, such as delivery service plans, and spend analyses. The cases of Rotterdam (in the project BuyZET) and for the logistics hub in The Hague show the first results of how (local) authorities can act to improve urban freight transport once the trips caused by procured goods and services are clearly mapped. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
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