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In April 2001, Japan put the Green Procurement Law into effect in an attempt to promote practices that pay consideration to the environment and favor the procurement of low-environmental-impact products and materials, as opposed to procurement based only on such considerations as price, quality and design. The law obliges government ministries and agencies and their affiliated organs to practice environment-friendly procurement.
A “closed-loop” society is one that keeps the impact of human activities on the environment to an absolute minimum through putting the following three principles into practice: creating as little waste as possible, recycling and re-using of as much of the generated waste as possible, and then appropriately disposing of the remainder. The Green Procurement Law was enacted along with five other laws, including the Construction Materials Recycling Law and Foodstuffs Recycling Law, as a means of taking real action to create an ecologically sustainable, closed-loop society.
Many companies in private industry have of course long been implementing green procurement practices, but the introduction of the Green Procurement Law provides powerful momentum to the shift to procurement practices favoring low-environmental-impact materials and products.
However, no matter how fervently the government and private industry promote and pursue green procurement, their efforts will be fruitless unless the supply side also responds to this trend. Supply-side technology that comprises the cornerstone of development of low-environmental-impact products is accordingly a vital prerequisite for green procurement to spread and become the norm in society. Fortunately it would appear that the technological prowess of Japan’s industrial sector is more than capable of fulfilling such needs. |
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| Sumitomo Bakelite's Information & Communication Materials Research Center |
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