The Third  international conference on Green Purchasing was held in Suwon, South Korea 21-23 October.  ECO-Buy's CEO Hugh Wareham was invited to speak and was the only representative from Australia and this major international conference attended by  over 1500 delegates from 52 countries. 

The Conference objectives were to combat climate change with green growth and expanding the green purchasing network.

In particular the conference aimed to do the following:

• Confirming the role of green purchasing in building a sustainable socioeconomic system for the world while developing specific implementation strategies with the goal of mitigating climate change.  In particular, promoting the importance of green growth in Asia and finding a role and place for green purchasing in sucessfully achieving green growth.
• Promoting mutual partnerships in formulating a 10-year framework of programs on sustainable consumption and production currently being pursued by the UN's Marrakech Process so as to reflect the opinions of officials in the public sector, business groups, consumers and NGOs.
• Forming a global network to support green purchasing by sharing the systematic, technical knowledge and experience necessary for implementing and expanding green purchasing and providing opportunities for cooperation.

"This conference was a major event which showed the growing importance of green purchasing internationally by attracting Al Gore and the South Korean Prime Minister" reported Hugh Wareham

"There were presentations from across the globe which illustrated a range of common challenges in implementing green purchasing.  It was also interesting to find out that a number of participants reported working on a number of similar initiatives which shows the need for increased communication and opportunities for resource sharing"

"ECO-Buy was the only Australian representative at this event and it was important to identify the progress and achievements that are being made." said Hugh

Case studies from ECO-Buy local government members including Buloke, Hepburn, Whittlesea and Maribrynong were used.