8 January 2019

What is next for Sustainable and Innovation Procurement?

What is next for Sustainable and Innovation Procurement?

Image (Pixabay) by "Pexels", licensed under CC0

The new year of 2019 brings new projects and new opportunities for Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP).

The circular economy is a key topic dominating the sustainability debate for years now. Public procurement has an important role to play in the transition toward more circularity. Ambitious local authorities are taking on the challenge to make their procurement more circular and 2019 will see the first results of their endeavours. To learn more about what communities are doing to implement a more circular economy check out the projects CircularPP as well as UrbanWINS  - and more projects coming up soon.

Social procurement goes beyond fair contracts for service providers. Ethical and fair trade needs to be assured along the entire supply chain. Implementing and monitoring fair supply chains and creating a commitment from all stakeholders is an important task for 2019. The Make ICT Fair project leads the way by involving local authorities in creating fair trade along the ICT supply chain.

More and more public authorities are seizing the opportunity to spark innovation through public tenders. Innovative products and services are the results of these. And cooperation among the public bodies is essential – it allows to implement good practices at a large scale and sends a powerful sign to the market for more innovation. Procure2Innovate and InnoBroker are two projects that show how Europe-wide cooperation among purchasing bodies can lead to innovation.

Sustainable and innovation procurement stretch beyond European borders. ICLEI offices globally have been working hard to support SPP and 2019 has promising global cooperation on the horizon. The Global Lead City Network on Sustainable Procurement – a network among leading cities in SPP - is developing a new and ambitious programme for the coming period.

The  Procura+ Awards 2019 reward outstanding sustainable and innovation procurement initiatives. Apply now and let your colleagues know about this opportunity.

For the New Year of 2019, we wish you all success with your sustainable, innovative, circular and strategic tenders. If you want to keep up to date with our work and key developments in sustainable and innovation procurement in 2019, subscribe to our newsletter here.