Page 22 - Social_Sustainable consumerism

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Environmental impacts
It was important to popularise public transport as a more environmentally friendly choice of transport.
The main purpose of this action was to limit the growth in the number of car owners and to attract more
passengers by offering them more comfortable and modern public transport services. According to the
contract between Estonia and Spain, the ERM is obliged to monitor the efficiency factor of the project until
2018. The efficiency factor is measured in tonnes of CO2 emissions prevented due to the project.
The methodology used to calculate the efficiency factor takes into consideration the amount of fuel that
has been consumed by the new buses compared to the amount consumed by the old buses. Consideration
is also given to the change in the number of public transport users and is based on the assumption that
a certain proportion of new passengers have shifted to public transport, thus stopped using their personal
vehicles. The estimated total amount of CO2 emissions saved has been calculated at 912 tonnes.

Case 2. Resource efficient print and copy management solutions – Consip, Italy

Since January 2010, the European Commission has been promoting good practice experiences on GPP to
illustrate how public authorities in Europe have successfully ‚greened’ a public tender or procurement
process. These include the use of life-cycle costing (LCC), circular economy principles, approaches fostering
sustainable innovation, among others.

From this website, we can for instance quote the case of Consip is a public company owned by the Italian
Ministry of Finance.

Context and background
It operates as Italy’s central purchasing body, and implements the programme for the rationalisation of
public spending on goods and services through the use of ICT (Information and Communication
Technology) and innovative procurement tools, such as framework contracts, e-marketplace for public
administration, and a dynamic purchasing system. Italy’s National Action Plan (NAP) on green public
procurement (GPP) entered into force in 2008 and, since then, GPP has been one of the pillars of Consip’s
Rationalisation Programme. Consip’s mission is to make the use of public resources more efficient and
transparent, by providing tools and support to public administrations which enable them to carry out
procurement procedures which foster competitive participation from enterprises.