Customer pressure for EcoDesign and product stewardship

Customers in the US and across Europe are increasingly including product environmental requirements in tender specifications. For example, later in 2007 NHS PASA intends to introduce procedures and guidance requiring detailed environmental requirements to be developed for each tender specification to reflect the significant environmental impacts associated with the particular contract, product, technology etc.

US

Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (H2E) was founded in 1998 by the American Hospitals Association, US Environmental Protection Agency, Health Care Without Harm and American Nurses Association. It promotes environmentally preferable purchasing (EPP) and has assisted several large healthcare trusts to include environmental product specifications in the tenders specifications issued by their Group Purchasing Organizations. The H2E website (www.h2e-online.org) includes a directory of environmentally friendly products and services. H2E also issues annual Environmental Excellence Awards which generate a considerable amount of publicity and interest from health care trusts.

European Union

The EC Public Procurement Directives published in March 2004 require public supply and service contracts with a value of more than €162,000 to include environmental considerations in technical specifications, award criteria and contract performance clauses where appropriate. Subsequently the European Court of Justice ruled that the Directives also apply in principle to contracts with a value of less than €162,000.

The Public Procurement Directives were implemented into EU Member States regulations in 2006 and are beginning to have a significant impact on health care purchasing, particularly in Sweden and UK.

Sweden

Government healthcare funding in Sweden is decentralized to 20 county councils, each of which is taking a different approach to integrating environmental requirements into their purchasing policies. Stockholm County Council developed a three stage procurement system in 2003 which involves:

• Assessment of environmental impacts of procurement groups over the previous 3 years
• Ranking of procurement groups based on environmental impact and quantity
• Setting environmental requirements for the highest ranking procurement groups

For example, PVC has virtually been phased out from all disposable medical products and DEHP is avoided for feeding tubes for small children. Suppliers are required to establish environmental work programmes including a policy, measurable goals and timescales.

UK

Changes to the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA) standard terms and conditions in January 2003 introduced new environmental requirements to:

• Provide data on request on packaging weights and types
• Comply with requests to minimise packaging
• Manage waste electrical and electronic equipment to facilitate recovery, treatment and recycling
• Provide information on request about environmental impacts of products to enable end-users to make informed choices

As part of its Sustainable Procurement Policy, the NHS PASA intends to introduce more detailed procedures and guidance on sustainable procurement later in 2007. These will require detailed environmental requirements to be developed for each tender specification to reflect the significant environmental impacts associated with the particular contract, product, technology etc. Where relevant, the tender specification will also include requirements for environmental performance data (e.g. water consumption of a pathology analyser). The tender specifications may also set out ongoing environmental performance reporting requirements which may become contractual obligations (e.g. to improve the energy efficiency of products supplied under the contract by 5% during the lifetime of the contract). Specifying product environmental requirements will assist with whole life costing of equipment and enable health care trusts to work towards their environmental objectives, for example by selecting low carbon products to meet energy efficiency targets. The PASA Sustainable Development team is also working with the PASA Centre for Evidence Based Purchasing to develop environmental criteria which will be built into product evaluations and buyers guides for medical equipment.

For further information, please contact Dr Aidan Turnbull
Head of WEEE, RoHS & EcoDesign on +44 (0)1225 748420