This project is meant to be a follow-up to the experiences gained in the pre-study on Greening Supply Chains as an attempt to make a “Market Readiness Analysis” regarding potentials for Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP). As the pre-study was carried out mainly as a literature review, this project will focus on experiences from case studies based on practical work. The pharmaceutical industry was chosen as the sector to review due to the complexity of procurement of pharmaceuticals and in order to identify different types of obstacles for procurers in their daily work.
The project includes different sub-studies with the specific objectives to:
Understand the current knowledge of procurement of pharmaceuticals in the literature
Review the use of public procurement in Sweden
Understand the implications of public procurement applied to case studies
Another main objective with this project is to suggest amendments to the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Compass, which now focuses on the social dimension, with relevant information taking also into account the environmental dimension. By adding the environmental dimension into the CSR Compass it will cover a much broader context in line with the definition of sustainability. Hence, the combined approach including both the social and the environmental dimension might very well lead the final achievement of a Sustainability Compass.
Environmental information is sparsely involved in current practices when procuring pharmaceuticals. One important reason is that the primary focus when evaluating risks and benefits with pharmaceuticals are linked to human health aspects and not impacts on the environment. Another equally important reason is the multiple obstacles for going public with environmental information linked to the manufacturing and use of pharmaceuticals following the market-induced secrecy necessary for original pharmaceutical producers to maintain their competitive edge as well as strict rules to adhere to with regard to “green” claims.
However, there exist some future possibilities to broaden the use of environmental information in public procurement. These possibilities include the following areas:
Developing a more structured overview of what the market can offer and the environmental work at potential suppliers through the Market Analysis
Make use of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) to facilitate the identification of products with superior environmental performance
Stimulate the provision of more traditional product-related environmental information to be publicly available in www.Fass.se
Start to routinely request environmental information from manufacturing and packaging as a part of an Environmental Management Systems in contract clauses
Secure sufficient resources to carry-out follow-up activities to get a better control of deliverables according to contracts and to secure continuous improvements by suppliers and sub-suppliers
Enhance the cooperation and the dialog between different actors/ target groups along the value chain
Any attempt to make better use of environmental information in public procurement has most likely a better chance to be operational and used in practice if they are related to legislation or to widely recognized management systems on a global scale, e.g. via the new EU directive for public procurement or ISO 14001.
Stockholm: Naturvårdsverket, 2016. , p. 70