ABSTRACT
Public procurement accounts for approximately 12% of the gross domestic product of industrialised countries. The largest part of it is controlled by local authorities. Consequently, their procurement decisions have an enormous potential for initiating and supporting sustainable development. But measures taken so far have not had the substantial impact on production processes and products that might have been expected. The objective of this chapter is to identify existing hurdles in green public procurement and to develop strategies for overcoming those hurdles. It is based on the findings of the authors within the RELIEF Project, during which a hurdle analysis was carried out in the six cities participating in the project. For this hurdles analysis, a decision-oriented view of public procurement was chosen. First, possible hurdles, revealed in practice, are identified. Then their relevance for the six cities is examined. Based on this analysis, strategies for best-practice sharing can be developed. If a city is looking for a method to overcome a hurdle, it might refer to strategies other cities previously used successfully.1
