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Sustainable Urban FUrniTURE: Tool design to perform environmental assessments in the green procurement framework (LIFE FUTURE)
Start date: Oct 1, 2015, End date: Mar 31, 2018 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Background Green Public Procurement (GPP) is an important instrument to accomplish the general goal of sustainable development, since it enables public authorities to address current challenges relating to legislation and sustainability. GPP criteria can contribute to reductions in energy consumption, greenhouse gases and waste production, and can promote the use of renewable resources and eco-design. GPP is of crucial importance to the Europe 2020 Strategy, since it is a market-based instrument for accelerating the shift towards a resource efficient and low-carbon economy, while improving framework conditions for business to innovate in green technologies. However, in terms of sustainable urban furniture (aka street furniture), there are barriers to be overcome, for instance, due to insufficient knowledge of the products by personnel and the lack of standard criteria. Objectives The main objective of the LIFE FUTURE project is to develop a tool – the Green Urban Furniture (GUF) Tool – to perform an accurate and simplified environmental analysis of urban furniture to facilitate Green Public Procurement (GPP). The GUF Tool will be based on the methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The project will study different elements of urban furniture, focusing on two categories selected to validate the functionality of the tool. Moreover, the tool will be used by public bodies for real-life procurement processes to demonstrate its effectiveness and practical applicability for GPP, with at least 200 urban furniture items being acquired using the GUF Tool. The use of the tool will help ensure a range of environmental benefits, for example, in terms of climate change, eco-toxicity and resource depletion. In particular, the project will: Help users to understand GPP criteria; Aid in the selection of the best solutions in terms of GPP; and Encourage public bodies to include green procurement clauses, based on GUF Tool results, in their tenders. Expected results: Updated analysis of GPP for urban furniture in the EU, in particular focusing on Spain and Croatia; Validation and demonstration of the economic advantages of the proposed system for analysis and evaluation (GUF Tool); and Reduction of the environmental impacts of urban furniture using the GUF Tool. The average environmental impact benefits of urban furniture after applying eco-design criteria are predicted as follows: - Global warming: 26.5% (reduction of 1 870 kg CO2 equivalent per urban furniture item); - Acidification: 28.7% (reduction of 51 kg SO2 equivalent per urban furniture item); - Eutrophication: 25.5% (reduction of 0.9 kg PO4 equivalent per urban furniture item); - Energy consumption: 15.5% (reduction of 27 000 MJ per urban furniture item); and - Amount of waste: 10.8% (reduction of 116 kg of waste per urban furniture item).

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