CHAPTER 5
CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS IN GREEN PURCHASING
Based on the various country experiences in green purchasing, this chapter will distil the critical success factors in green purchasing. It will also offer an outlook on its future.
RELATIONSHIP AND SYNERGY BETWEEN GGP AND ECO-LABELING Based on the international experiences described in the preceding chapters, GGP can have a synergistic relationship with eco-labeling. The latter may be used effectively to fill the information gap, clearly identified by many government purchasers as a major obstacle in implementing green procurement. This could be done through the adoption of ecolabeling product criteria in the tendering language and technical specifications for government procurement or even direct identification of ecolabeled products as green products. On the other hand, the practice of GGP often has a tremendous effect on the growth of ecolabeled products which would otherwise have a fairly-small market share. Once their product categories are listed as a purchase target in a GGP programme, the sales and market of a specific eco-labeled product may receive a fairly significant boost. This is because a government mandate
offers government purchasers concrete and solid incentive to purchase the eco-labeled product. Also, in deciding on the targeted product categories, the GGP and eco-labeling programmes often look to each other in deciding future product categories to work with. The GGP programmes will often pick product categories that are available in an eco-labeling programme. And, when a government selects product categories that are not yet in an eco-labeling programme, the latter would often have to work hard to develop product criteria for such a category. Thus, GGP and eco-labeling work hand-inhand and complement each other in fi lling the information gap for green products and services. Moreover, the GGP may significantly increase consumer awareness of such eco-labels — the mere mention of eco-labeling or GGP provides a significant boost and raises awareness of the existence of such a programme. In addition, since GGP programmes typically have some performance-tracking mechanisms, they help the eco-labeling programme in tracking its implementation effectiveness. Nonetheless, the coupling of the two programmes has been criticised for reducing the voluntary nature of eco-labeling which had been thought of as a means of encouraging manufacturers to voluntarily GREEN PURCHASING : THE NEW GROWTH FRONTIER
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