Concern for problematic chemicals, waste generation and the working
environment has been part of the purchasing activities in the Frederiksborg County for
several years. But when politicians ask "how green are we?" it is difficult to answer,
because it is difficult to measure to what extent the procurement activities ends up
in green products.
Against this background, the hospitals Purchasing Department in 2004 started a cooperation
project with the Agenda 21 function in the county with the purpose of labelling green
products and by doing so assist in the selection of environmentally better choices.
The hospitals in Frederiksborg County have a system of procurement contracts which is
mandatory to follow for all departments. In the electronic system for purchasing and
financial control the products available are listed. Hence each product can be labelled
with a set of data and by adding an extra "column" to the system is it now possible to
extract reports on amounts of purchase of products with an environmental "label".
Labelling of green products
The electronic solution is in principle very simple; the difficult thing is to identify a
reasonable set of criteria for the labelling. Therefore a working group has been established
with participation of both purchasing expertise and environmental expertise.
The starting point for the labelling is the official labels like the Nordic Swan label and
the EU-flower. If the products have these labels it is added to the product information for
each product.
When the products are not labelled with one of these official labels, either because the
relevant label does not exist or because Š for some reason Š it has been chosen not to
purchase these products, the working groups has established its own set of criteria for
categorisation of the products.
Green products were labelled in the following way:
· Official environmental label - the Nordic Swan or the EU-Flower
· Environmentally optimised product - own criteria
· Not environmentally acceptable - own criteria
· Not environmentally assessed - when insufficient information
These own criteria are, whenever possible, tightly linked to available public systems
for environment assessment of products - including e.g. the set of "green purchasing
guidelines" prepared by the Danish EPA or similar - and to a set of overall principles
for the assessment
Principles for eco-labelling
· Minimum energy consumption during the use-phase.
· Minimum waste generation during the use-phase. Products must have a long lifetime
and be recyclable.
· Products of biological origin must be grown with minimum impacts to the environment
considering also biological diversity.
· Chemicals known or suspected to have health and environmental harmful impacts are not
accepted.
Results
Till now the county has prepared criteria for cleaning and laundering detergents and batteries,
while criteria for office calendars, diapers, operation theatre gowns and drapes etc. are under
preparation. All detergents and batteries have been assessed and labelled in the purchasing system
and the specific reports for environmental assessment of products have been prepared.
Along with the preparation of the criteria, purchasing department staff are given environmental
training in the form of a series of thematic meetings relating to the environmental issues
relevant for the actual product groups. So far the products have been categorised by the
Agenda 21 staff, but in the longer perspective the idea is that the staff will be able to
categorise the products themselves according to the prepared criteria.
Future perspective
During the next year preparation of criteria will be linked to the tendering activities and
prepared in a form where they can be used directly in the calls for tenders. Later on the
idea is to use the tendering to update the criteria.
It will take some years before all product groups have been assessed, but the process has
been started fairly successful and it will be a challenge for the purchasing staff to keep
this system running during the planned organisational changes to come when the Frederiksborg
County is merged with other regional bodies from 2007.
Written by Agenda 21 project manager Anne-Marie Møldrup (
AMM@fa.dk),
purchase manager Dorte Sørensen (
dosor@fa.dk), product
nurse Annette Grønner (
ANEG@fa.dk) and environmental
consultant Henrik Grüttner (
HGRU@fa.dk).
