Lit Review – Public and Private sectors

The public sector as defined by the Business Dictionary as being part of the national economy and provides goods and services that cannot otherwise be provided by the private sector (Business Dictionary, 2014). Examples of these goods and services range from the procurement of electricity, to cleaning services, and water management to name a few. The public sector's main focus is that of service delivery (The Student Room, 2014). Due to human induced climate change many governments have requested their public sectors to change and optimize their supply chains to cater for green purchasing. As a result of this the majority of the European Union have effectively found ways to reduce the overall effect of their purchasing activities (European Union, 2010, page 1 paragraph 1). The procurement of public goods and services in the EU is done through the life cycle approach (European Union, 2010, page 3 paragraph 1). The life cycle approach that is used by the member countries of the European Union has 5 steps (Europa, 2014), the fifth step that has been added in recently deals with all the externalities that can occur while performing the assessment. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) use the more traditional four step approach to evaluate the life cycle of the goods and services to be procured (EPA, 2014). And in South Africa there is a nine step evaluation method on how procurement of public goods and services should be done sustainably (Sustainable Energy for Environmental & Development Program, 2012, pages. 4-7). The first of the nine steps deals with the formation of a green procurement team that will have the right level of knowledge and enthusiasm when it comes to green procurement; the second step concentrates on which implementation approach to undertake, an example of this step s running of