"Sustainable public procurement seeks to look beyond an organisation's short term needs and consider the long-term impact of a purchasing decision, to achieve the optimal value for money on lifecycle cost basis" notes ICLEI's Grace Sly in Urban Reverb, the podcast of the Smart Cities Marketplace.

In the podcast. Sly highlights the power of public procurement to drive environmental, social, and economic goals, highlighting strategies for cities to adopt. The episode outlines key steps - from City-to-Business collaboration to aligning procurement with broader policy objectives - for cities to transform their purchasing practices. Such a transformation can be challenging for cities, due to knowledge gaps and regulatory constraints.

The podcast offers examples of how these challenges can be overcome. As Alis Daniela Torres, head of Green Digital Transformation at ICLEI notes, "achieving carbon neutrality on a local level by 2030 and 2040 will require fast transformations in city services and urban infrastructure. Public procurement is an amazing tool to support these transformations." The full podcast episode featuring Torres and Sly, as well as Technopolis' Owen McColgan can be found here.

The Urban Reverb podcast also highlighted the importance of City-to-Business collaboration in a recent episode on renewable energy. ICLEI's Julen Imana Sobrino, noted thjat renewable energy and district heating offer cities accessible and cost-effective ways to transition to sustainable energy sources. That requires however strong collaboration between municipalities and industries to overcome investment and technological challenges.