A life cycle approach to Green Public Procurement of building materials and elements: A case study on windows

Abstract

Green Public Procurement (GPP) is a significant policy tool for reducing the environmental impacts of services and products throughout their whole life cycle. Scientific and easily verifiable environmental criteria, based on a life cycle approach, should be developed and used within procurement procedures. In this paper, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to wood windows showing how it can support the criteria definition. After a foreword on GPP development in Italy, the evaluation features of the environmental performances of building materials and components are outlined. The LCA case study is then presented, describing the use of the analysis results to define the environmental criteria. LCA allowed to identify the main impacts and the critical processes of the window life cycle, giving a scientific framework to discuss GPP criteria with manufacturers associations and stakeholders. Nevertheless, it couldn’t help neither in identifying detailed criteria for GPP nor to define numerical thresholds to be used as reference in procurement procedures. The appropriate strategies should be selected taking into account the technical status of the market, the standard development and the voluntary industry commitments, involving manufacturers associations. Finally, some elements to develop a structured approach for GPP of construction materials are presented.

Introduction

Sustainable Consumption and Production policies of European Union (EU) has considered Green Public Procurement (GPP) a fundamental policy instrument to reduce the environmental impacts of products throughout their life cycle, increasing innovation and efficiency in the use of energy and materials. Recently, the European Commission has set up a GPP strategy, developing guidelines and training tools and renewing the relevant regulations to encourage public authorities to reduce the environmental impact of their purchases, thanks to the introduction of environmental criteria into tendering procedures. As part of this strategy, the Commission adopted in 2008 a Communication on green procurement to give guidance on environmental criteria and propose ways of approaching voluntary or mandatory target setting [1].

Public authorities spend approximately two trillion Euros every year, equivalent to some 17% of the EU’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), for buying goods and services [2] and many are spent in sectors responsible for high environmental impacts, such as transport, buildings and furnishings. Consequently, by using their market leverage to opt for products that also respect the environment, public authorities can influence suppliers and manufacturers to produce more eco-friendly goods and services. The market created by GPP has also the potential to influence private companies and the consumers to change their consumption habits, making a significant contribution toward sustainable consumption and production [3]. As a result, the growth of GPP is seen as a means of creating a more sustainable market, allowing also to foster innovative environmental technologies, both at EU and national level.

The development of scientifically sounded, shared and easily verifiable environmental criteria, based on consistent and reliable data and methods, is a key element of this policy. Over recent years, the European Commission has encouraged Member States to develop and adopt National Action Plans (NAPs) for greening their public procurement, outlining the priority objectives at national level and setting out the environmental criteria for some priority product categories.

In Italy, the NAP for GPP was approved in April 2008 [4]. Its strategic environmental aims are fostering efficiency and savings in the use of natural resources, with a particular focus on energy and its impacts (for instance greenhouse effect), reducing both the use of dangerous substances and the waste production. According to the European guidelines, this plan identifies some priority sectors of intervention selected among others on the basis of their environmental improvement potential, public expenditure, potential impact on the supply side, political sensitivity, market availability and economic efficiency. The construction sector, which accounts for more than 10% of the EU’s GDP [5], is one of Europe’s most considerable industries with significant and complex relationships with the economic, social and environmental spheres of sustainable development. Italian NAP identifies this sector and all related activities, services and products (which include construction materials, such as wood, aluminum, steel, concrete, glass; construction products, such as windows, wall and floor coverings; heating and cooling equipment; operational and end-of-life aspects of buildings; maintenance services; on-site performance of works contracts) as a priority one for which to develop detailed GPP criteria.

Despite the diffusion of some green building rating and certification schemes and the availability of some Type III eco-labels (Environmental Product Declarations) of construction materials, in Italy, since now, only limited activities have been undertaken on GPP of building products. Consequently, a technical working group has been set up by the Italian Ministry of Environment with the aim of defining minimum environmental requirements that qualify a product as environmental preferable along its whole life cycle, while ensuring an appropriate response of the market. Therefore, a case study founded on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been developed on windows by the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), with the aim of evaluating the environmental impacts of this building element along its entire life cycle in order to define the environmental criteria for public tender processes.

The aim of this paper is to present this case study showing as LCA methodology can support the definition of scientifically sounded GPP criteria for construction products, based on consistent and reliable data and methods.