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.

The Government of Flanders has a target to achieve 100% sustainable public procurement by 2020. In order to track its progress towards this target, the Environment, Nature & Energy Department has developed a system for monitoring SPP, which it has integrated into existing accounting systems. Data can now be collected easily, in a format which generates useful, comparable results, and which can be used to guide future improvements.

The city views the circular economy as an essential approach for achieving sustainability goals and is exploring procurement approaches where waste can become new raw materials and where public authorities purchase a specific service instead of buying a product.

The City of Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve aims to increase awareness and interest in
healthy and sustainable food among children (as well as parents and school staff); training people far from employment; and, motivating the market to provide more sustainable food.

Ghent has spent the last 10 years progressively greening its municipal cleaning services to achieve the use of 100% environmentally sound products. Ghent purchases products meeting the European Ecolabel criteria, as a minimum, and was the first city to use Cradle-to-Cradle Certified products through their contracted cleaning services for all of its buildings and facilities. There are 340 locations in the city (ranging from office buildings, schools, nurseries, museums, etc.) which benefit from the City’s cleaning services and/or products (such as those used for providing public catering services), which involve 350 external collaborators. The City’s annual spend on cleaning products and services is 14.4 million euro.

In a tender for a new office supplies framework agreement, th Government of Flanders asked for at least 50% of products to be made from recycled or renewable materials and to be sustainably sourced and produced. Orders are made on a website using a smart delivery system that includes low CO2 emission transport, and using contract performance clauses, constant improvement and behaviour change has been built into the delivery of the framework.

A requirement for a new administrative centre in Leuven, which will house 26 departments and 800 officials were identified. The Flemish Government uses a handbook on sustainable office buildings to evaluate larger contracts for the design and construction of office buildings.

The idea behind this stationery framework contract was to allow all departments and agencies in the Brussels-Capital Region to access what they needed through an in-house store, which includes the supply of green products. The in-house store has 150 items that are kept permanently on stock; other items can be ordered via the framework contract using a catalogue. A 40% discount on the listed price is given to all orders made from organisations participating in the framework contract. Numerous green criteria were incorporated into the tendering process – this included the subject matter, technical specifications and award criteria (40 percent weighting was given to environmental quality). Following ten months of operation, the store has 27 associated organisations (including regional and municipal bodies) using it, out of a possible 57 organisations. The store has sold €190,000 worth of stationery until now and 56 percent of the items sold were green.