EC GPP Case Study - UNICA’s procurement of a food and beverage vending service with 64 machines in September 2019, through a concessions contract, resulted in four suppliers bidding for a five-year contract worth €210,000. This particular concessions contract is part of UNICA’s sustainability policy and aims to improve the services provided by the University in terms of environmental sustainability, through the reduced use of plastic and the promotion of circular waste management.

The overall aim of BUS-GoCircular is to address and overcome the challenges of the stimulation of demand for green energy skilled workforce, along with hands-on capacity building to increase the number of skilled workforce across the value chain. BUS-GoCircular will achieve this objective by developing and implementing a circular construction skills qualification framework with a focus on multifunctional green roofs, façades and interior elements. In addition, the project is strengthened by application of successful train-the-trainer methods and techniques for upskilling both demand and supply sides of the value chain involved. For stimulation of demand for sustainable energy skills, specific activities concerning companies, real estate, home owners and local authorities will be developed, including support towards legislative changes through circular green procurement and recognition of skills. Implementation will be carried out at country-specific and regional levels, based on a blend of measures to stimulate demand complimented with hands-on and practical upskilling of local and regional training capacity and workforce.

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.

This Procurement Policy Note (PPN) launches a new model to deliver social value through government's commercial activities.

The SAPIENS Network focuses on Sustainability and Procurement in international, European and national systems. It will be the first training network and academic research project integrating SPP as a sub-discipline within the scientific field of sustainable public procurement studies.

The city of Bremen commissioned the new report ‘Beyond Buying: how can the circular economy principles feed sustainable public procurement policies and practices?’ to outline how municipalities can include circular economy principles into their procurement policies and practices. The report also makes policy recommendations to support these efforts and mainstream sustainability across the procurement process.

EC GPP Case Study: In 2018, the small town of Sulejów began a procedure to build Poland’s first ‘passive’ swimming pool – that is, a pool with ultra-low energy requirements for heating and cooling. This was achieved through a combination of high thermal insulation and air-tightness, as well as the use of heat-pump technology and installation of light emitting diodes (LED) lighting.The building was completed in March 2021, and the desired passive design standard has been achieved.

EC GPP Case Study: The Kantoor2023 project is a renovation project of the two towers of the World Trade Centre (WTC) in Brussels. The resulting residential-work complex showcases sustainability and circularity.

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.