Advancing Green Purchasing in Spanish Municipalities

In 2019, the Spanish government published a Presidential Order approving the General State Administration’s Green Public Procurement Plan. This plan covers all public administrations including the General State Administration, its autonomous bodies, and social security management entities. Its objectives are to promote the acquisition of goods, works and services with the least environmental impact, to serve as an instrument to promote the Spanish Circular Economy Strategy, to guarantee a more rational and economic use of public funds, to promote environmental clauses in public procurement, and to publicize the possibilities offered by the legal framework for green public procurement. However, at the local level, many municipal governments have struggled to implement green purchasing policies. Consequently, green purchasing has not reached its potential to help municipalities mitigate their environmental impacts. Researchers at University of Granada and Arizona State University’s (ASU’s) Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative have sought to address these issues. Our three broad objectives are to: 1) Determine the facilitators and barriers to adoption and implementation of green purchasing policies in Spanish municipalities 2) Recommend actions for advancing green purchasing practices more effectively 3) Encourage Spanish municipalities that lack green purchasing policies to adopt and implement them within their jurisdictions. To accomplish these objectives, we conducted a national survey of people in finance, procurement, public works, city planning, environmental compliance, waste management and sustainability-related positions in South Korean municipalities. The survey generated 41 individual responses from 41 municipalities with 25,000 residents or more