Public procurement can be a key tool in driving the development of innovative goods and services on the European market. The European Commission has decided to launch the “Big Buyers Working Together” project to support collaboration between public buyers with strong purchasing power and promote the wider use of strategic public procurement for innovative and sustainable solutions. By working together and pooling their resources, cities, central purchasing bodies, and other major public buyers can maximise their market power and impact. Under the Big Buyers Working Together project ten communities of practice will be created. Each community of practice will be devoted to the purchase of a specific product, work or service where European collaboration is needed. To support the process of developing more strategic procurement approaches, public buyers will meet regularly online and in person.

ICLEI and PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PwC) will be organising, on behalf of the European Commission Green Public Procurement workshops in each Member State to provide dialogue between stakeholders on the use of public policy development as a strategic lever for innovative and sustainable public policy development and support the development of a roadmap.

The SYMSITES project aims at developing new technologies and solutions based on the Industrial and Urban symbiosis (I-US) concept, for local and regional collaborations among diverse actors (Citizens, Municipalities and Entreprises) and sectors improving the sustainability of the use of industrial and societal resources starting from wastewater and waste materials.

P2GreeN aims to develop, test and adapt the use of human sanitary waste to produce safe, bio-based fertilizers for agriculture. Vast amounts of wastewater with a high nutrient content disappear daily into the sewers of large cities. On the other hand, agriculture, using conventional fertilizers, struggles to produce good yields in the fields to feed the growing world population. What some have too much of, others have too little of. There must be a solution to this.

The H4C ECoP is co-leading and supporting the establishment and growth of the European Community of Practice for Hubs4Circularity together with the project H4C Europe. The consortium is helping identify and connect all the interested parties (starting with existing local Hubs, as well as industries, regions and cities, policymakers and standardisation bodies), enabling them to take action through an information and knowledge platform.

By fostering knowledge sharing between regions, cities and their industries, the knowledge platform provides the tools and the scientific evidence for this approach to be adopted widely across Europe. All the materials collected and developed throughout the project will continue to be available after its end, to keep supporting the community in the transition to a net-zero, circular economy.

The European Innovation Council (EIC) is part of the European Commission's effort to give innovative companies better opportunities to become world-leading enterprises. ICLEI supports partnership building between the EIC Community members and public procurers interested in working with EIC SME’s; and manages the onboarding of private and public procurers interested in working with innovators on the EIC Community Platform and motivate their active participation in the EIC Community.

The Business Acceleration Services (BAS), is a box full of exciting business acceleration services and an extensive innovation network for EIC beneficiaries. Its aim is to boost connections and foster communication by creating a shared knowledge base and a virtual meeting-place where innovative and business partners can connect and leverage new partnerships.

REDOL will foster industrial-urban symbiosis, transforming cities into hubs for circularity. It will redesign five value chains for solid urban waste (packaging, plastics, construction and demolition waste, textiles, and waste from electrical and electronic equipment) to produce 12 circular products.

Over four years of activity, REDOL will upgrade waste management technologies for the collection, sorting and classification of materials, enhance the processing routes of sorted materials to avoid landfilling and facilitate the uptake of digital tools to optimise value chains and promote the interaction among key players.

Among its results, the project will develop guidelines and recommendations for decision makers and will improve citizens’ perception on solid urban waste and recycled products, thus increasing their participation in collection schemes.

REDOL will support the transition of Zaragoza towards a zero-residues city by 2040, allowing 144.720 tons of solid urban waste being reused, valorised or transformed into secondary raw materials. This will contribute to saving over 14B€ and 280 ktCO2 per year.

Effective investment and financing opportunities for circular economy projects in Europe are still few and far between. Investors need to gain trust in circular economy projects, while projects need to become less risky and bankable.

The DEFINITE-CCRI project establishes a “deal engine mechanism” – an assistance programme to help make circular economy projects bankable – to provide cities, regions and project developers with technical and financial expertise in an unprecedented and streamlined process. The deal engine will be built with investors and finance partners with the goal to secure investments in four circular economy projects of up to €20 million each.

DEFINITE-CCRI will demonstrate the bankability of high-impact circularity projects and increase investors’ trust in circular economy innovation. The project is expected to close the gap between project developers and investors and ultimately contribute to lower the use of virgin non-renewable material, reduce emissions and foster a more just and inclusive circular employment in line with the European Green Deal, the Circular Economy Action Plan and the Bioeconomy Strategy.

CircularInvest will provide project development assistance (PDA) to selected circular economy project promoters from across Europe with the aim to develop significant projects at the local and regional scales, and close investments for an overall volume of more than €20 million.

During the project’s lifetime, CircularInvest will launch two calls for expressions of interest to engage circular economy project promoters. The services offered include project development assistance, knowledge transfer and networking opportunities.

The lessons learnt from CircularInvest’s experience will prepare the pathway for future replication through a Step-by-Step Guide to de-risk future circular economy projects; policy recommendations; a Circular Investor guide to increase investors’ trust; a knowledge exchange platform for project promoters; business cases to allow the replication of circular economy solutions; and a pipeline of circular economy investment opportunities to support initiatives after the project’s end.

CHORIZO aims to improve the understanding of how social norms influence behaviour and food loss waste generation and use this knowledge to improve the effectiveness of decision-making and engagement of food chain actors, towards zero food waste.

The project´s particular goals are to address existing research gaps and will use its outcomes to deliver and advance innovations helping actors to engage more effectively in food waste prevention and reduction activities

The BIOMODEL4REGIONS project aims to support the establishment of the innovative governance models at local/regional level to achieve better-informed decision-making processes, social engagement and innovation to support and strengthen EU and international science-policy interfaces to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

The methodology is based on the set-up of a governance structure among bioeconomy clusters that will leverage on previous successful projects, initiatives and best practices to capitalise on work performed through several years of research and studies in the field of bioeconomy. These results will be demonstrated within the project to support 6 pilot regions chosen in clusters’ network.

CityLoops is a four-year EU-funded project focused on two waste streams: organic, and construction and demolition waste, including soil. Høje-Taastrup and Roskilde (Denmark), Mikkeli (Finland), Apeldoorn (the Netherlands), Bodø (Norway), Porto (Portugal) and Seville (Spain) are the seven European cities involved in the project that will develop and test a series of demonstration actions on construction and demolition waste (CDW) and organic waste (OW) with the aim of achieving material circularity. Over 30 new tools and processes will be tested as part of CityLoops.

The Intelligent Cities Challenge (ICC) is a European Commission initiative that supports 136 cities in using cutting-edge technologies to lead the intelligent, green and socially responsible recovery. The ICC cities and their local ecosystems will be engines for the recovery of their local economy, create new jobs, and strengthen citizen participation and wellbeing.

The ICC is part of a wider EU support system that recognises the importance of delivering on the promises made by the European Green Deal, the digital strategy, and other EU policies. It looks to move towards a more digital, service-oriented and low-carbon economy, supported by a knowledge-based society, that enables circular economy systems through ‘local value loops’, evidence-based reskilling, and sustainable investments.

The Smart Cities Marketplace plays an important role in speeding up the green transition of cities in Europe by improving citizens’ quality of life, increasing the competitiveness of European cities and industry as well as reaching European energy and climate targets. Furthermore, the Marketplace offers services and events for both cities and investors on creating and finding bankable smart city proposals by using our Investor Network and publishing calls for projects.

The Marketplace is currently in the process of establishing a community that will consist of various Focus and Discussion groups. The Smart Cities Marketplace facilitates Focus and Discussion groups on various topics to guide peer exchange and support cities in their smart development.

The general objective of this project is to develop a pool of professional public procurers who will undertake to support the public procurement activity for all contracting authorities and will support the transition to the green and digital economy in Cyprus. More specifically, the project aims Improve the country’s performance and ranking in all indicators of strategic public procurement including the promotion of sustainable, green, innovative and socially responsible public procurement

The main idea behind the GPP Helpdesk is to promote and disseminate information about GPP, and to provide timely and accurate answers to stakeholders' enquiries. Stakeholders can send their questions by email to gpp-helpdesk@iclei.org. The GPP News Alert – a newsletter covering the latest news on green procurement in the EU plus a selection of good practice examples to illustrate how GPP can be done in practice – is also part of the Helpdesk service. As are the organisation of webinars on topics of relevance to practitioners. As of 2022 the European Commission expanded the scope of the GPP Helpdesk to also cover the social responsibility dimension.

Children and young people spend most of their days at school, making it not just a place for learning, but also for eating and socialising. SchoolFood4Change (SF4C) combines all of these elements to have a positive long-term impact on school meals across the continent. The four-year EU-funded project sets out to redefine what it means to eat healthily and sustainably at school, while also addressing food education at several levels. SchoolFood4Change sees schools as catalysts for systemic and multi-actor change, including but not limited to school curricula. It involves training cooks, caterers and public procurers at city level and aims to create a true ripple effect, impacting up to two million citizens in the 12 participating EU countries.

In line with the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the project develops innovative solutions and tailored, locally adaptable good practices for schools, school meal providers, responsible public authorities and policymakers. To achieve the ambitious goal of enabling community-wide food system change, the 43 partners involved in SF4C – spearheaded by ICLEI Europe – follow a holistic multi-level approach: this entails the development of innovative and sustainable food procurement criteria and methods, the promotion of planetary health diets and cooking, and the introduction of a Whole School Food Approach. This is a defined framework for municipalities and schools that are aiming to create a holistic food culture and bring food to the heart of the school mission.

On behalf of the EC, ICLEI is in charge of the EC training programme for the period 2022-2024. Local trainers are in charge of implementing and delivering a national training programme. It consists of four introductory sessions based on the existing GPP training toolkit and one specific session covering GPP issues of specific relevance to the country. The training activites will be carried out in ten EU member states:

- Bulgaria by Center of Energy Efficiency (EnEffect)
- Cyprus by Cyprus Energy Agency (CEA)
- Czech Republic by Adam Gromnica
- Estonia by Baltic Environmental Forum Estonia
- Greece by Nthessis
- Hungary by Business Economics Science Education Foundation (BESEF)
- Lithuania by Baltic Environmental Forum Lithuania
- Portugal by Laboratório Nacional de Energia e Geologia (LNEG)
- Romania by REPER21
- Slovakia by creatio eu

COACH is a three-year EU-funded project which aims at facilitating collaboration between farmers, consumers, local governments and other actors to scale up short agri-food chains which rebalance farmers’ position, create win-wins for producers and consumers and drive innovation in territorial food systems. Besides other activities, the project collects a series of emblematic good practice examples from 12 countries which demonstrate how farmers can access consumer-driven opportunities to improve their incomes and rebalance their position in food chains and creates a ‘living library’. Moreover, COACH designs a ‘farm-to-fork procurement toolkit’ for public authorities in order to improve sharing of experience and help them design appropriate tenders for healthy and fresh food supplied by small-scale producers and also to support farmers to know how to access these opportunities. ICLEI will organise training sessions and two Breakfast@Sustainability's events will also be organised on these topics in Brussels.

The working group brings together leading public buyers of IT as a means for exchange, stock taking, discussion and identification of actions towards a next-generation ethical procurement of IT.

The overarching goal of the project is to support the increase of the market readiness for an effective nearly-zero energy Buildings (nZEB) implementation and to stimulate the demand for energy related skills:
- by addressing the key identified barriers and needs of nZEB implementation in focused markets,
- by creating support mechanisms and stimulating the development of skills frameworks by new market driven mutual recognition training and certification scheme for nZEB deployment that will facilitate the necessary legislative changes and
- through development and communication of toolboxes, tailored guidance and practical support to engage users and other key categories to integrate in a nZEB dynamic market.

CIRCULAR BIOCARBON is a first-of-its-kind flagship biorefinery conceived to valorise organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) into value-added products: diamond-like-carbon coatings, green graphene, tailor-made bio-based fertilisers, or bio-plastic, as well as a variety of intermediate products. In order to maximise replicability and boost potential penetration in the market, the biorefinery will be operated for three years in Spain and Italy, and consistent business and exploitation strategies will be put in place. The CIRCULAR BIOCARBON biorefinery, organised through a pool of cascading technologies, start from anaerobic process steps (after proper pretreatment) of mixed urban waste streams, of which OFMSW is the main one, in order to treat all the biowaste produced by a medium-size city (at the end of the project, a commercial scale biorefinery will be fully operative). The fundamental objective of the CIRCULAR BIOCARBON project is to open up new business frameworks based on a new circular vision of waste treatment in a city towards a sustainable bioeconomy, to which actors leading the territorial waste management schemes and policies will be brought to maximize impact on the market, on policy makers and on society.

ICLEI works together with the Belgian Federal Institute for Sustainable Development (FISD) to support public buyers to help create better working conditions and protect the rights of workers and communities through ethical purchasing practices. The working groups runs throughout 2021, with the aim to create a space for leading big public buyers to exchange, take stock, discuss and identify actions towards a next-generation ethical procurement of IT.