Green Public Procurement in Lithuania: Volumes and Possibilities for Environmental Impact Reduction

Abstract

Green public procurement is a public procurement, which integrates environmental considerations into the public procurement process, and it is considered to be an appropriate tool seeking to reduce negative impacts on the environment. Therefore this paper aims to analyze results of green public procurement implementation in Lithuania over the 2008 – 2010 year period, considering its scope and possibilities for reducing environmental impacts. It is determined that practical implementation of green public procurement in Lithuania is not smooth and is far from achieving the objectives yet. In 2008 green procurement amounted to 8.3%, in 2009 – 6.1%, in 2010 – 5.8% of the total number of public procurements performed. The biggest share of performed green public procurement is applied for works (82%), mainly related to the construction. However, some possibilities to reduce environmental impacts in terms of CO2 have been missed. To compare to the benefit achieved, estimations show that in the case of personal computers, printers and vehicles, 126 - 150 tons of CO2 could have been saved additionally per year, if environmental criteria had been applied to 50% of particular performed procurements. Hence, it is especially important to speed up the development of green public procurement in Lithuania, ensuring not only lowering negative impact on the environment, but also developing the market for environment-friendly goods and services.