When is Green Really Green? A Latvian Case Study on Updating of Food Supply Green Public Procurement

Abstract

Green public procurement (GPP) is an important tool and is used to reduce adverse environmental impacts caused by food production. To have a more detailed look at the application of GPP in Latvia, the authors screened 97 public tenders for supply of food products, documenting the choice of the green criteria. Only 15 % of the screened tender documents corresponded to the national GPP requirements. Only 4 % of the tender documents gave higher priority exclusively for organic products compared to products within national quality schemes or integrated pest management agriculture. The authors compared these findings with the opinions of environmental experts, GPP guidelines by the European Commission, and experience from other countries. The authors conclude that 1) self-reporting is not an appropriate method to measure the implementation level of GPP, and 2) having a large number of criteria without clear goals can lead to using the easiest, but least environmentally beneficial options, and 3) for some tenders complying with national GPP, the environmental benefits may be unclear.