In 2021, a change in national procurement directives made social and environmental responsibility mandatory for public procurers in the Czech Republic. I spoke to Martin Rajman, Head of Central Procurement at Czech Television, who shares his experience with sustainable procurement and TCO Certified.
Could you describe the state of sustainable procurement in your country?
Martin Rajman
Head of Central Procurement at Czech Television
Sustainable procurement in the Czech Republic has been promoted by local branches of large multinational corporations in the private sector and, in the public sector, by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Until a few years ago, this was not a strong topic in the public sector. The situation began to change in 2016, when a new Act on public procurement came into effect, incorporating a new European Parliament directive. This Act has explicitly allowed to incorporate both environmental and social aspects in the tender conditions.
So public policy has been a key driver, would you say?
Yes. Another strong driver was the “Resolution of the government of the Czech Republic on the rules for applying a responsible approach to public procurement”. Although it was not strongly promoted, I consider this document to be the first trigger for larger implementation of sustainable procurement in the public sector. It was the first time that our government stated that sustainable public procurement is the right approach and is not only allowed, but “preferred”. However, the promotion of sustainability remained mainly on the shoulders of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs which had been drawing an EU grant to promote sustainability and assembled a dedicated team of enthusiastic experts.
But a really massive push came in 2021, when a new amendment to the Act on Public Procurement came into force. This amendment introduced the principles of socially and environmentally responsible public procurement, and made them mandatory. It also brought these principles to an equal level with the existing principles of transparency, proportionality, equal treatment and non-discrimination.
This amendment to the public procurement law has caused an “earthquake” in the profession of public procurers. Even those who already had some experience were surprised, but managed to adapt without much difficulty. The inexperienced did not know how to procure and have been fighting against the law. The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs organized a large educational campaign: the Public Procurement Association organized webinars, professional magazines wrote about the topic, several web pages collected and shared best practices. Sustainable procurement has become the topic of the year. Every organization is currently looking at how to address it.
Tell us about your approach at Czech Television. What is your driver for purchasing more sustainable IT?
Czech Television was an early adopter of sustainable procurement in the Czech Republic. We started to integrate sustainability into procurement of lower value-added services (e.g cleaning services) in 2017. The reason was our dissatisfaction with the quality of the service, which had been tendered on the basis of the lowest price criterion. We gradually abandoned the idea of evaluating on lowest bid alone and started to adopt the idea of value for money and life cycle cost. In short, we adopted “life cycle thinking”. Life cycle thinking brought us to sustainable IT, and also, to TCO Certified.
Both environmental and social topics are important for us. As a public TV broadcaster, we have certain values that stem from our mission. These values are also incorporated into the Act on Czech TV, the Statute of Czech Television and the Code of Czech Television. Also, we broadcast news stories about child labor, forced labor in internment camps, conflict minerals and so on. Imagine if we produce and transmit these stories using equipment made by children, or by forced labor? How would that look?
What benefits do you see now or expect in the future?
Quality, long life cycle, low operating cost, reliability, safety, and a clean conscience.
What’s your advice for other purchasers? Where’s a good place to start?
Even a small step is important. There is no need to make big changes right away. But it is important to start and find your way.
We try to be transparent, rational and provide clarity toward suppliers, employees and the public.
And it is always good to start with analyzing why I want to buy something, where the value is, the costs, risks, opportunities. Think about how it is manufactured, and what will happen at the end of life cycle. This analysis is the most important part of sustainable procurement.
Why has Czech TV decided to use TCO Certified?
We identified certain sustainability risks associated with IT hardware and searched for ways to mitigate them. Our IT purchases are negligible compared to the size of global manufacturers. We have very limited market power, we have limited time, energy, money and knowledge. We found that TCO Certified is a comprehensive certification, covering virtually all the sustainability risks we have identified. And it is widely spread and used. Asking for products certified according to TCO Certified means that we do not restrict competition, and we mitigate sustainability risks without having to invest time, money and energy of our people. At the same time, we put pressure on the manufacturers to incorporate sustainability into the whole life cycle of the product we need to purchase.
Dmytro Kapotia leads our support to purchasers in Europe and occasionally writes for the TCO Certified Blog. Dmytro is passionate about sustainability, cycling, and DJing.
