Adopting sustainability and circularity in ICT procurement – Netherlands Government Case Study - Eco Choice Aotearoa

In 2019, the Dutch central government launched its procurement strategy, “Procurement with Impact“. Their goal was to create climate-neutral business operations by 2030 and make ten key sectors fully circular by 2023 through strategic procurement.

One of those sectors included ICT Hardware, which as many of us know, comes with serious sustainability challenges.

This initiative kicked off with the creation of the “ICT Working Environment” plan for 2021-2023. It was a plan that set the stage for how the government would handle ICT procurement, ensuring that all tenders within this category adhered to these sustainability goals.

The use of ecolabels in procurement

The Netherlands, along with other EU Member States, has utilised credible ecolabels and certifications in procurement to support specific environmental and social sustainability targets, as well as comply with EU regulations, such as Articles 40, 43, 67 and 70 of Directive 2014/24/EU; EU GPP Criteria for computers, monitors, tablets and smartphones (2021); Public procurement for a circular economy (2017).

An example of such a certification used in this procurement strategy is TCO Certified, the sustainability certification for ICT products.

TCO Certified is an ISO Type 1 ecolabel, used widely in public procurement globally for over 30 years and targets four key areas of electronics: climate, substances, circularity and supply chain.

TCO Certified also collaborates with Eco Choice Aotearoa to support the use of ecolabels and certifications in New Zealand.

Targets and requirements

The Netherlands targeted the following environmental and social impacts:

• Requiring CO2 footprints and a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) calculation for all products,
• Inclusion of people far from the labour market,
• Respect of international core labour and human rights standards including in the supply chain.

The procurement strategy aimed at boosting circularity by requiring:

• Essential components of computers, laptops, tablets, displays and mobile phones to be replaceable based on the ‘EU GPP criteria for computers and displays 2016’.
• The availability of spare parts for at least five years to be demonstrated by a certificate of an ISO Type I eco-label.
• All batteries to have 60% of their original capacity after 300 charging cycles.
• The possibility for the public authority to be offered reused, refurbished, remanufactured or similar products upon request and, if the products are leased, that at least 80% are returned for a second/third life.
• All products to contain an average of at least 10% of post-consumer recycled plastics and, where cardboard boxes are used for packaging, to consist of at least 80% post-consumer recycled cardboard.
• Where non-biobased plastic film or sheets are used for packaging, to include at least 75% recycled material. All products (excluding accessories) to be mandatorily TCO Certified which is at the moment the only worldwide independent certification for e-waste compensation mechanisms that are reliable, verifiable and credible.

Results and impact

For the year 2021, the procurement approach has resulted in:

• Approximately 17% CO2 reduction compared to 1990.
• All 13,527 purchased laptops, tablets and smartphones were certified as e-waste neutral by TCO Certified E-waste Compensated. This led to 4,400 kg less e-waste, 46 tonnes of CO2 reduction and recycled raw materials (gold: 1.5 kg, copper: 5,700 kg, silver: 15.5 kg and palladium 600gr)
• The lifecycle of the purchased ICT products was extended to a minimum of 4 years up to 10 years, depending on the product.

Moreover, since 2021, this strategy has received considerable visibility from their contracts and from winning the Procura+ award for innovation in 2022.

The Netherlands is currently sharing its experiences and developing successful collaborations at national, EU (Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Spain and Germany) and international level (Canada, Singapore, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway).

This case study was written in collaboration with TCO Development. The original can be found here.