CCC-2 Product Health Guides: Connecting Public Procurement with Human Health

Furniture, cleaning products, textiles – these are just some of the products we encounter every day that may contain substances of concern. Understanding where these substances can be found and how they may affect our health can help us make healthier product choices.

Public procurement has an important role to play in this. The products purchased by municipalities and other public authorities are used every day in offices, schools, public spaces and other facilities, meaning procurement choices can directly influence the products people come into contact with.

As part of the ChemClimCircle-2 (CCC-2) project, we have developed a series of Product Health Guides to make these connections easier to understand and to support greater awareness of healthier and more sustainable product choices.

The guides translate complex information about chemicals and potential health impacts into a short, accessible format. Each guide looks at a specific product group, highlighting substances of concern, explaining how they may affect human health, and providing practical examples of healthier alternatives.

The series covers several product groups commonly relevant to municipalities and public procurement, including furniture, food and catering, cleaning products, plastics-containing products, road building & renovation, ICT, textiles and outdoor area management.

While public procurement decisions are made by procurement professionals, their effects extend much further. Municipal employees, schoolchildren, healthcare workers, residents and many other people use publicly procured products and spaces every day. Understanding these connections is an important part of making green public procurement more meaningful in practice.

Product Health Guides complement the broader work of ChemClimCircle-2, which brings together Chemicals, Climate and Circularity – the three Cs of the ChemClimCircle approach – and helps public authorities consider them together in procurement decisions.

Explore the CCC-2 Product Health Guides and discover how better procurement choices can contribute to healthier public spaces.