UK EPIC provides practical advice for private individuals and professional buyers who may have no special environmental knowledge or expertise with purchasing products but wish to ensure the products they buy are good value, do not waste resources and are less harmful to the environment.

Buying “green” can be a complex business. Detailed environmental specifications are rarely available for a product and, where they are, often need considerable technical expertise and environmental knowledge to correctly interpret.

The Market Transformation Programme (MTP) through UKEPIC, provides indicative performance standards for a range of products to help buyers and specifiers make informed procurement decisions. Policy makers are also informed.

ECO PERFORMANCE

The problem of how to buy “green” has been solved for those products that already have an Eco-label. The EU’s eco-label sets the “gold” standard but there are currently very few such labelled products available in the UK market and it might be difficult to run a competitive tendering exercise, for example. Unfortunately, there are no convenient “silver” or “bronze” composite environmental specifications.

MTP has produced a guide on energy and eco criteria entitled Green Procurement – Made Easier” via MTP which has been compiled to overcome that problem. We have identified the current most important energy and environmental aspects for buyers to check, suggest some “quick” specifications to aim for and, where available, provide links to searchable databases to help you find suitable products.