Significant action is taking place at EU level to promote sustainable procurement and in particular green public procurement (GPP). 2008 has been a key year in progressing the GPP agenda, as the European Commission proposes ambitious targets and suggests mandatory measures for greening public procurement across all Member States. In this light, what is the current status in Ireland relating to sustainable and green procurement? This study set out to address two central research questions: what is the level of awareness and knowledge of sustainable procurement among procurement professionals in Ireland?; what are the education and training needs associated with sustainable procurement in Ireland? A literature review was conducted and 99 Irish procurement professionals, across a number of sectors1 and geographic locations in Ireland, were surveyed to assess their awareness and knowledge of sustainable and green procurement. In addition, procurement education and training course providers were interviewed to review sustainable and green procurement coverage in the programmes they offer. The data collected through the survey and reviews were supplemented by information gathered via face-to-face or telephone interviews with key informants, such as: procurement professional bodies, the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, DG Environment, DG Enterprise. These data were analysed and assessed providing the results and conclusions of the study. This study recommends that the first step must be to address the current inertia on sustainable and green procurement in Ireland. Government has a key role in leading the shift to sustainable procurement through setting an example with its own procurement operations and providing a policy and regulatory framework to encourage and mandate the public sector to buy sustainable or green products and services. The EPA could promote the sustainable procurement agenda among the private sector by requiring that IPPC or waste licensees include consideration of sustainable or green procurement in their annually revised environmental management programmes. A public information campaign to raise awareness of the benefits and opportunities created by sustainable (including but not limited to green) purchasing would further stimulate action on sustainable procurement.

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Ryan, B.   "Study of Awareness & Knowledge of Sustainable Procurement among Procurement Professionals & Identification of Education & Training Needs". Associated datasets and digitial information objects connected to this resource are available at: Secure Archive For Environmental Research Data (SAFER) managed by Environmental Protection Agency Ireland https://eparesearch.epa.ie/safer/resource?id=cfd2e2f5-49cb-102e-a0a4-f81fb11d7d1c (Last Accessed: 2025-01-20)

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SAFER-Data Display URL	https://eparesearch.epa.ie/safer/iso19115/display?isoID=191
Resource Keywords	Procument education sustainable
EPA/ERTDI/STRIVE Project Code	2004-SD-DS-14-M2
EPA/ERTDI/STRIVE Project Theme	Waste and Resource Management
Resource Availability:	Public-Open
Limitations on the use of this Resource	Any 3rd party use of this report should acknowledge the original authors of the report and the EPA. Please see the automated citation below.
Number of Attached Files (Publicly and Openly Available for Download):	1
Project Start Date	Thursday 1st January 2004 (01-01-2004)
Earliest Recorded Date within any attached datasets or digital objects	Thursday 1st January 2004 (01-01-2004)
Most Recent Recorded Date within any attached datasets or digital objects	Saturday 31st January 2009 (31-01-2009)
Published on SAFER	Thursday 25th November 2010 (25-11-2010)
Date of Last Edit	Thursday 25th November 2010 at 10:09:05 (25-11-2010)
Datasets or Files Updated On	Thursday 25th November 2010 at 10:09:05 (25-11-2010)

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Description of Geographical Characteristics of This Project or Dataset
This project was a desk study and no data collection in the field or the laboratory was carried how. The details of the survey participants from Ireland are outlined now. The contact details of those involved in procurement in more than 300 organisations in Ireland, within both the public and private sectors, were gathered from web searches, business directories and by contacting the relevant organisations directly. The telephone interview schedule was then designed, based on the web-based questionnaire but significantly reduced to a set of 12 concise questions. An intensive campaign of telephone interviews was then carried out.

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The following is a list of projects, datasets, and resources on SAFER-Data from which users downloaded attachments from soon after downloading attachments from this resource Study of Awareness & Knowledge of Sustainable Procurement among Procurement Professionals & Identification of Education & Training Needs. You can view the full description for projects, datasets, and resources by using the links supplied.

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