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Achieving gold, silver and bronze
You can achieve four levels of the Green Procurement Code. These levels reflect the procedures you have in place to run your green procurement programme and the results of these procedures. They are concerned with your commitment and success in reducing the environmental impact of your activities through green procurement.
Your level of achievement will depend on two factors: the results of the online progress review and the completion of a third party auditor review. Success in achieving bronze, silver and gold status will be celebrated at an annual awards ceremony.
Progress review: part one
Part one of the progress review is based on your performance against pre-set management questions, marked out of 10. The questions cover people; policy, strategy and communication; procurement processes; engaging suppliers and measurement and results. Depending on the question, a bronze, silver or gold level pass may be achieved by a score of 5-9 or a score of 10.
Once you submit the final scoring, you will immediately receive an indication of whether you are at the entry, bronze, silver or gold level in progress review part one.
Progress review: part two
Part two of the progress review is where you should record your environmental impacts and green purchasing of products, materials and services during the past financial year.
You will be awarded the bronze, silver or gold level of the Mayor’s Code based on the combination of your scores in parts one and two, as illustrated below:
| Part one: bronze | Part one: silver | Part one: gold | |
| Part two: bronze | Bronze | Bronze | Bronze |
| Part two: silver | Bronze | Silver | Gold |
| Part two: gold | Silver | Silver | Gold |
Bronze, Silver and Gold level – award criteria
At least one purchase in a spend category must qualify by being auditable against either the Government Buying Standards (formerly known as Buy Sustainable Quick Wins), the European Commission’s Green Public Procurement criteria or a recognised eco-label or certification scheme, preferably within the ISO 14024 and ISO 14025 standards.
Other purchases should of course also be reported, but a spend category will only be counted towards the award level if it includes a qualifying purchase.
A qualifying purchase category must include a minimum of one qualifying purchase and, for the Silver and Gold levels, one or two of the purchase categories must be within the organisation’s top five spend categories based on the Pro-class category system.
A qualifying purchase is a purchase that meets either the Government Buying Standards (formerly known as Buy Sustainable Quick Wins), the European Commission’s Green Public Procurement criteria or has a recognised eco-label or certification scheme as listed on Defra's Green Label site. The purchase should ideally be in one of the category’s high spend areas or a high environmental impact area.
Bronze
Minimum of one qualifying purchase category submitted, which includes at least one qualifying purchase.
Silver
Minimum of four qualifying purchase categories. At least one of the four purchase categories must be within the organisation’s top five spend categories.
Gold
Minimum of six qualifying purchase categories. At least two purchase categories must be within the organizations top five spend categories.
Questions?
If you have any questions about the online progress review or the revised award criteria, please contact your project manager.