Sustainable requirements should be incorporated into technical specifications, award criteria or contract conditions; however, the principles of equal treatment, non-discrimination, transparency and proportionality are essential and require clarity and precision.
Specifications must relate to the characteristics of the particular work, supply or service being purchased, and not to the general capacities or qualities of the bidder.
The Government Buying Standards (GBS) are a set of product specifications for public buyers when buying goods and services. The GBS for food and catering services includes a requirement for fairly traded products and the standard for textiles goes further to include demonstration of suppliers addressing ethical and social issues such as living wage provision, avoidance of child labour, application of fair trade principles and adequate working conditions. It should be noted that at the time of publication the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) are in the process of updating the GBS.
Building Standards apply for construction related procurements.
Labels can be used as evidence of meeting specific environmental, social or other criteria, for example SA8000, Fairtrade or WFTO. Equivalent evidence of meeting these criteria must also be accepted.
Labels are a specific term and how they should be used is set out in Regulation 44 of the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015.
The use of labels needs to be approached with care. A label must be:
While a public body can ask for what they are buying to have an independently verifiable label which certifies that it meets specific environmental, social, or other characteristics, a particular label should only be requested where all of its certification characteristics correspond to a procurement. The Annex includes model wording that may be used for this purpose.
A buyer could also just use the criteria behind labels to help draw up contract conditions in order to define the conditions in which the products originate, and then for checking compliance with these requirements, by accepting the label as a means of proof of compliance with the technical specifications.
The European Commission published a fully revised version of the Buying Green Handbook in April 2016 which contains further guidance on using labels.
The Annex includes examples of wording that may be used for this purpose.
