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Amsterdam
The city of Amsterdam takes the view that sustainable procurement can be realised through learning-by-doing. For the city, sustainable procurement is an important instrument in realising policy goals with regard to sustainability and climate change. Amsterdam takes a pragmatic approach: when criteria are available, they are applied. The criteria for sustainable procurement that have been developed by the Dutch government agency AgentschapNL, however, are considered to be a minimum threshold. The municipality has, together with a group of its purchasers who are well disposed towards sustainable procurement, developed a guidebook to inform the different departments about the city’s overarching sustainable procurement policy.
The most recent framework agreement for computers concluded by the city of Amsterdam contains a number of interesting exclusion criteria such as: the Energy Star 5-label; the direct suppliers’ ability to provide its customer with environmental advice regarding the supplied products and their use; and respect for ILO norms. Monitoring or verification mechanisms to guarantee adherence to the ILO conventions have, however, not yet been put in place. Environmental and social criteria add up to 30% of the determining criteria in the selection phase of the tendering procedure. The contract was won by service provider Scholten Awater.
Although the current framework agreement for computers is reasonably well phrased, several issues remain that will need to be tackled in future tenders. The framework agreement is concluded between the city and the direct supplier, a reseller, not with a brand company. However, the municipality mentions that it is not clear what can be expected from direct suppliers such as resellers and service providers in terms of their responsibility and influence over the supply chain. Amsterdam realises that a direct dialogue with the IT hardware brand company will be needed to increase sustainability throughout the supply chain. Another question relates to the relevance of asking suppliers for references or declarations of good conduct. What, after all, is the value of such declarations if they can not be checked or verified? Another point for debate concerns the usefulness of applying sanctions to suppliers for non-compliance with labour or environmental standards.
