GPPnet officially started on 31 January 2003 with the Launch Conference held in Cremona at Palazzo Cattaneo.
Officers of the 13 municipalities and of the Provincial Administration, the GPP experimenters, were divided into four working groups.
All of them were provided with:
an Informative Booklet, that offers an overview of themes relevant for GPP implementation;
a document that contains the analysis of current national and EU legislation and illustrates how ecological criteria can be introduced into PA’s procurement procedures.
The administrations were then invited to compile two Check-lists, a query check-list and a detail check-list, useful for defining the GPP field of implementation.
With the query Check-List all products and services used/supplied by the PAs involved in the project and possible object of GPP were identified.
The detail Check-List served the purpose of analysing more into depth all the activities that can be source of significant environmental impacts.
In particular, the Check-List was aimed at the collection of information on: the expenditure of a local authority on each activity; the methods of implementation and management of different services, the quantities and characteristics of products purchased, expenses and techniques for management and maintenance of public buildings, planning and execution of public works.
The outcome of the investigation served for the construction of a hierarchy of environmental impacts of different activities, useful for the identification of more relevant activities for the introduction of GPP among PA’s best practices.
In order to facilitate the officers’ work, the detail Check-List was accompanied by ‘Guidelines for Compilation’. In addition, a help number for continuous assistance was activated.
In July 2003, the phases of involvement and analysis of the GPPnet target (i.e. 13 Municipalities and 8 sectors of the Provincial Administration). The fundamental step was undoubtedly the realisation of the environmental impact hierarchy constructed by Ecosistemi and discussed with the 4 working groups in Cremona on the 23rd of July.
Basic information for the construction of the hierarchy were taken from the financial balances and the detail check-lists compiled by the local authorities. The analysis was a step-by-step process: starting from the identification of a good/service, the environmental impacts of that product/service were then identified over its life cycle to finally arrive to the assessment and classification of the environmental impacts of each good/service.
The hierarchy of environmental impacts enabled the identification of the GPP field of implementation as a whole and of the linkages between GPP and the achievement of environmental policy objectives.
However, in order to reach specific project’s objectives, the field of implementation of GPP was defined by looking not only at the hierarchy but also at the types of calls for tender published by the target local authorities over the past two years, at their purchasing needs and at the observations stemming out from the Roundtables with suppliers.
On 25 September a meeting was held in Cremona in order to define the methodological course that led to the drafting of the GPP Handbook, milestone of the GPPnet project.
A phase of intense collaboration between the 4 working groups and the co-ordination group started from there and ended at the beginning of 2004 with the publication of the Handbook.
The GPP Handbook integrates the one realized by APAT (ex ANPA) three years ago, in terms of number of products and services considered and is structured so as to enable local authorities to:
- readily identify operational instructions needed for including “ecological criteria” (namely GPP requirements) into procurement procedures of goods/services;
- establish a relation between green purchases and environmental policy objectives, so as to make immediate also the integration of GPP with other tools of environmental policy that might have been adopted (e.g. LA21, EMAS);
- make a self-assessment of the GPP situation within the administration.
In order to realize the Handbook all services supplied and goods purchased by the PA have been extracted from the detail Check-List and classified into macro-categories. Each working group was then assigned with some macro-categories of goods/services, so as to proceed systematically to the identification of possible “ecological criteria”.
At the same time, the following were considered for the identification of ecological criteria: products with the European Ecolabel, products that satisfy the requirements established by national labels, products with a certification of controlled production (e.g. production from recycled materials; products from organic agriculture) and products that have been object of a life cycle analysis.
In its final format, the Handbook is structured in three sections: General, Methodological and Operational.

General Section
The general section has the objective of illustrating the field of action of Green Public Procurement (GPP) in general terms and more specifically of the GPPnet project. It starts from the theoretical foundations of sustainability policies to arrive at the description of GPP as an enabling tool for sustainable development. In this context, not only the strategies adopted for the introduction of GPP at different levels, International, European and National, are described but the linkages between GPP and the other Integrated Product Policy instruments are also highlighted.

Methodological Section
The methodological section reconstructs the path that a local authority has to follow to adopt GPP, either as a mere green procurement practice, or as an instrument to reach sustainability objectives.
Moreover, the instruments in support of GPP introduction, used by the local administrations involved in the GPPnet project, are illustrated, together with the main eco-labels and the prescriptive procedures in the area of green procurement.

Operational Section
The operational section guides the local authority in the elaboration of “green” tenders and service contracts. With this purpose, the section contains:
the list of products and services (189), divided into macro-categories and categories, for which ecological criteria to be considered in purchasing procedures have been found;
the ecological criteria regarding the above mentioned products and services;
the operational instructions to modify purchasing procedures in an environmental sense.
Moreover, this section contains two samples of service contracts modified in an environmental sense and some sheets for the self assessment of the level of application of GPP in the local authority.

In parallel, experimenters have been trained via an intensive training cycle which dealt with relevant sustainable development and GPP issues and also via an e-learning activity. The information activity was spread towards market representatives as well (producers and suppliers), that were provided with informative material on GPP in occasion of two Roundtables on the themes “Office management and mainenance” e “Catering and cities”, aimed at facilitating their involvement and at establishing a direct dialogue with them.
The experimenters concluded the phase of elaboration of sample tenders with the draft of 12 calls for tender for the purchase of paper, compost containers, printers, primary school recreational furniture, light bulbs for school buildings, , office cleaning, green area maintenance, school catering, works of road planning and maintenance and square paving.