Legislation and Situation of The Green Public Purchasing in China
There is not a special "Law of Green Public Purchase" at present, but in the term 9th of the Law of Public Purchasing, it said that "the Public Purchase should be helpful for the national economy and the objective of social development, including the protection of environment, the support to those underdeveloped and minority districts, the promotion to small enterprises, etc.". The explanation about the objective of "protection of environment" is that "the Public Purchase should be propitious to the environment improvement of the produce process, and the government should purchase the production according with the appeal of environment protection. It means that the Public Purchasing can not buy the production from the corporation which producing unsatisfied with the environment, nor buy the production unsatisfied with the environment protection. The Public Purchase should consider the request of environment protection, give those regular firms more benefits, promote and support them for a further development through the commercial chance of Public Purchase".
The Chinese Government make the "Project of Construct an Environment-friendly Society" as an important content of "11th Five Programming", it has passed a series of policy documents to promote the work of Green Public Purchase.
The State Department issued several opinions about "Accelerate the development of circulatory economy" in 2005 (authorized number: [2005]No.22), in this issue, the 5th important part said that "in the segment of consumption, we should encourage a new method which is good for the resource saving and environment protecting, and make a promotion for those using productions with energy-efficiency labelling, energy-saving or water-saving labelling certification, environment labelling, green-food labelling and organic-food labelling, reduce the use of over-packed and one-off productions. Governmental Institutions should implement the Green Public Purchase."
The State Department issued a decision about "Put the scientific and developmental viewpoint into effect of reinforcing environment protection in Feb. 2006, in this issue, the 9th clause named ﾒemphasize the development of circulatory economy" said "in the segment of consumption, we should emphasize the environment-friendly consumption method, implement the environment labelling, the environment certification and the Green Public Purchase System, consummate the using system of recycle resource." This issue make sure the policy direction about the Green Public Purchase of the governmental institutions.
China has develop its Green Public Purchasing work in some districts, the local finance departments unite the local environment protection departments promote a series of offical documents about the Green Public Purchasing in these districts, including the list of productions, the guideline of purchase and some other standard documents as well as local management regulations.
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 "Green Olympic" is an important topic of the 2008 Olympic Games, it has become the focus of the world, one of the significations of "Green Olympic" is purchasing the environment-friendly productions and services, which is a good chance and platform for our government to examine the effort of Green Public Purchase. The Beijing Olympic Committee has already published a book named "The Guideline of Green Purchase" and put it in practice, in 2008, the Olympic Games in Beijing will use more environment-friendly productions than ever.
・ The local fiance department and the environment protection department in Qingdao issue their first list of Green Public Purchase Productions in a list nowadays, and point out that in the same conditions of technologies, services or other indexes, the production on the Green Public Purchase lists should be purchased with priority. In order to promote the local circulatory economy and clean production develop in a healthy way, promote the government use the Green Public Purchase and Green Consumption, develop the effect of government purchase policy and effect of environment-friendly productions in government, society and corporations, select the first group of Green Public Purchase Productions from a series of environment-friendly productions recommended by relevant departments, the Public Purchase Website and the environment protection department in Qingdao take in charge of the promotion work of this list.
・ People Commissary Conference of Guizhou Province confirmed a ordinance about "Construct circulatory economy and eco-city in Guiyang (The capital city of Guizhou province)" in 2004, in this ordinance, the 25th clause said that "The governments in every level should make a promotion to encourage Green Consumption, develop green market system actively, generalize the Green Purchasing and social sustaining consumption, advocate and develop modest consumption." Furthermore, according to the "ordinance of circulatory economy in Guiyang City", every finance budget units should use the Green Public Purchase and cultivate the green market system from 2006.
   
(Information supplied by Environmental Certification Center of SEPA, China)