Municipalities need cars and transporters to perform their administrative tasks. But they also require busses and special vehicles for waste disposal, firefighting and green space maintenance. The key point here is to safeguard the environment and people by restricting the volume of noxious emissions and noise pollution from municipal vehicles. There are however also many more aspects to consider. These include the extremely complex and widely ramified supply chains in the automotive industry. Labour and human rights are also often violated at various stages in the production process and irreparable damage is inflicted on the environment. The golden rule therefore is: the smaller the vehicle fleet, the better – and the less mileage, the better. In addition to actual procurement, it is also necessary to optimise routes and ensure that vehicles are working to capacity in all areas.
Learn more about the social, human rights and environmental challenges in automotiveproduction. Public procurement can create key incentives for more sustainable production and also lead by example with respect to the use of electric vehicles, car-sharing services and cargo bikes.
For general information on integrating sustainability into the procurement process, see here.
An online tool to assess the local human rights situation by "Helpdesk Business & Human Rights" is available here.
Municipal best practice examples of sustainable procurements of vehicles, see here (German only).
Further information on mobility (in German):
Click on the individual stages in the information graphic on the left to learn more about the ecological and social challenges when purchasing vehicles.
Vehicle production requires various raw materials – irrespective of the type of powertrain. This includes leather for upholstery and rubber for tyres, but above all numerous metals that are used in varying quantities for the chassis, on-board electronics system, batteries or catalytic converters. The extraction of these raw materials is linked to a large number of environmental, social and human rights risks. Examples include:
Environmental challenges
Social challenges
Further information (in German):
Raw materials processing entails environmental risks and labour-related hazards. Examples include:
Environmental challenges
Social challenges
Outsourcing the production of automotive parts across an internationalised value chainsaves the automotive industry money. This also fuels the much-decried 'race to the bottom'. Production is often cheapest in places where respect for human rights and compliance with social and environmental standards are at their lowest. Examples of negative impacts include:
Environmental challenges
Social challenges
Further information:
A vehicle's service life and powertrain are the main determinants of its ecological footprint. The types and quantities of vehicular emissions depend on how the vehicle is powered (petrol, diesel, electricity, plug-in hybrid, hydrogen) but also on its weight and the speed at which it is driven. Passenger and goods transport are responsible for many negative environmental and social impacts, including:
Environmental challenges
Social challenges
Further information (in German):
End-of-life vehicles (ELVs) are an important source of secondary raw materials (SRMs). It is thus critical that they are recycled and their components and materials reintroduced into the circular economy. In Germany, compliance with the EU's recycling and reuse quotas is regulated by the End-of-Life Vehicle Ordinance.
At municipal level, support can be directed to collection points and recycling plants whose recovery operations are particularly environmentally friendly. The same applies to research institutes operating in this sector. Support is also required to increase the recycling quotas of plastics, vehicle glass and also precious metals used in automotive electrical systems. Raw materials recycling should also be built into e-vehicle battery design. Furthermore, in theirso-called 'second life', batteries can be used as stationary energy storage systems.
Environmental challenges
Further information (in German):
Iron ore mined in Brazil, bauxite extracted in Guinea, copper from Peru; produced in Hungary, Mexico and China; driven on roads in Germany with oil from Iraq and Iran. This is an example of what a vehicle production and consumption supply chain might look like. Getting from raw materials extraction to the finished product generally entails long transport distances by ship, truck and train. Fuel consumption and emissions negatively impact theenvironment and stress the climate in a way that is also harmful to human health. Transport with heavy-duty vehicles such as trucks is regulated by the Euro 6 emissions standard(Commission Regulation EU/582/2011), and procurers should demand compliance. From an environmental point of view, regionalising production makes sense in that it does away with the need to haul product components over long-distances.