Nordic Cooperation on Green Public Procurement:

The Nordic Council of Ministers has long stressed the importance of Greener Public Purchasing (GPP) in the strategy for sustainable development and has initiated co-ordination efforts so that public buyers in all the Nordic countries can benefit from each other's experience. GPP has been seen as an important way to promote the market for cleaner products, and the newly adopted Environmental Action Plan 2009-2012 sets the objective of the Nordic region being a pioneer when it comes to environmentally adapted procurement. This report presents the first set of criteria that can be seen as 'examples from the Nordic countries'. The 8 product groups are: soap and shampoo, mattresses, hotel services, lightning, white goods, dressings, office paper and envelopes, and toner cartridges. The work was coordinated with the EU project 'GPP Toolkit' which introduced criteria for 10 other prod-uct groups.