Circular Economy and Sustainable Procurement: The Role of the Attestation of Conformity

The impact on the environment of the procurement processes has been considered, in the last years, as a critical issue to be managed in order to improve the sustainability performance of the organizations. At national and international levels, policies and regulations have been defined in order to push private and public organizations toward a more sustainable procurement process: from the European policies on green public procurement (GPP) to the international ISO standards on sustainable procurement there is an increasing attention to this subject. Within this framework of tools for the improvement of the sustainability in procurement, a key role is played by the circular economy approach and the use of recycled or reused materials and components is strongly encouraged. The demand for recycled or reused materials and components requires, on the other hand, criteria and methods to assess the real content of recycled matter in a building material or element; due to this reason new standards and regulations require that the recycled content of a product shall be declared under a scheme of attestation of conformity issued by a third party. The chapter present a review of the actual systems for the attestation of conformity of materials and products including a determined percentage of recycled materials.