Routines and Communities of Practice in Public Environmental Procurement Processes

Environmental procurement has received increasing attention as a policy tool promoting change towards sustainable consumption and production. The successful implementation of public environmental procurement policy requires the establishment of new routines for user-producer-supplier relationships that enable the integration of environmental aspects. The aim of the study is to analyse the roles of different communities of practice and learning patterns in environmental procurement processes. Building on experiences from the procurement of ecological food and sustainable construction in Stockholm, the paper identifies learning patterns and codes of practice when environmental criteria are introduced into existing routines for economic and technical specifications in public procurement processes.