LIFE FUTURE

25 July 2016 Content

LIFE FUTURE – Sustainable Urban FUrniTURE: Tool design to perform environmental assessments in the green procurement framework – was a 2.5 year European project that started in 2015, co-funded with support from the LIFE financial instrument of the European Union. It was led by a consortium of 6 partners, including ACR+, representing both public authorities and research institutes.

Project co-funded by the European Commission under the LIFE+ programme, 2015 - 2018.

Highlights

Did you know that the GUF Tool has been used for real green public procurement? In València (Spain), 71 benches were bought after a tender generated with the GUF Tool. Similarly, Koprivnica (Croatia) purchased with the GUF Tool 2 benches, 3 flower pots, and 2 waste bins.

The GUF Tool is now open and available to all. Public authorities, manufacturers can use it to make their own tender or submit environmentally friendly products.

TO THE GUF TOOL

{slider THE PROJECT}

LIFE FUTURE project involved the development and validation of the GUF Tool, which is an online tool to support public bodies on the decision making related to the purchase of more environmentally friendly urban furniture.

LIFE FUTURE aimed to promote green public procurement, focusing on the urban furniture sector. The project allowed to overcome the difficulties encountered by persons in charge of public procurement procedures when they have to include environmental clauses in call for tenders and assess the offers received, due to their limited knowledge on environmental matters.

{slider METHODOLOGY}

The following actions have been carried out during the project:

Technical updating to identify the legislation in force and to collect environmental information available for urban furniture;
Identification of the products of interest falling under the category of “urban furniture”;
Development of a database with green public purchase criteria and environmental profiles for these urban furniture products;
Graphical design and functionalities implementation of the GUF Tool;
Developing an environmental assessment multiple criteria decision-making method for obtaining single scores to evaluate award criteria for green public procurement using TOPSIS;
Demonstration and validation of the tool through virtual and real tenders: benches and play-grounds were the selected products for the virtual tendering process.

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The main result of the project is the GUF Tool. However, other documents have been produced during the project:

It has been showed that the project had positive environmental impact, with a reduction of waste generated and a contribution to decrease global warming. It also had positive socio-economic impacts as the tender generated by the GUF Tool should aim to minimize the impact produced by the transport and distribution of urban furniture products which means that local businesses are favoured. Some of the social impacts are directly targeted by tenders, such as the participation of companies that could employ disabled persons or the fight against illiteracy.

{slider THE GUF TOOL}

The GUF Tool is an online tool to support public bodies on the decision making related to the purchase of more environmentally friendly urban furniture. It guides users throughout the whole tender process, from the generation of the environmental requirements that they must include in the call for public tenders to the comparative environmental assessment of the products offered by different suppliers.

It offers two levels of bidding:

“Silver GUF”: for public administrations willing to merely perform a Green Public Procurement process. The products offered by suppliers only need to comply with the selected mandatory “Specifications” criteria for being accepted in the bidding process.
“Gold GUF”: for public administrations that want to show a higher level of environmental commitment in the Green Public Procurement process. In addition to fulfil the mandatory “Specifications” criteria, products offered by suppliers are environmentally scored and compared to others using voluntary “Awards” criteria. The results of this comparison allow public administrators to identify those products with better environmental performance.

A video-tutorial on “How to use the GUF TOOL” is also available online.

{slider PARTNERS}

LIFE FUTURE’s project coordinator was AIMPLAS (Asociación de Investigación de Materiales Plásticos y Conexas) and its project partners were:
•   ACR+
•   AIJU, Asociación de Investigación de la Industria del Juguete, Conexas y Afines
•   InnDEA, Fundación InnDEA Valencia
•   Koprivnica, City of Koprivnica
•   UJI, Universitat Jaume I

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More information:
https://life-future-project.eu