The Sustainable Infrastructure projects will assist the European Commission in supporting national authorities to ensure a sustainable implementation for major public infrastructure procurement projects. This goal will be achieved through the preparation of a guidance document, which will include good practices to inspire public authorities to enhance their knowledge and ultimately guarantee sustainable infrastructure projects and the highest environmental standards throughout the supply chain.
ICLEI is currently conducting 18 interviews with different stakeholders (procurers, experts from the financial sector, policy officers) on sustainable public procurement. ICLEI will also provide input for a “sustainability checklist” on infrastructure procurement projects and will organise two online events to promote the main findings and projects results. A number of case studies on procurement of sustainable infrastructure projects will also be prepared by ICLEI.

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.

Schools have the potential of being the place where young people learn about healthy diets and where a sustainable food culture can be promoted and experienced.
The EU-funded “SchoolFood4Change” (SF4C) project builds on this potential, seeing schools and school meals as catalysts for systemic change on a broad societal level. The project will provide innovative solutions and tailored, locally adaptable good practices for schools, school meal providers, responsible public authorities, and policymakers, in line with the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The focus lies on education and empowerment of children and adolescents, given their vulnerability to diet-related conditions and disadvantaged environments on the one hand, while, on the other hand, acknowledging their transformative power and ability to drive change.
To achieve the ambitious goal of enabling community-wide food system change, SF4C follows a holistic multi-level approach, based on the cumulated expertise of established European organisations and networks, sustainable food procurement and nutrition specialists, scientists, chefs, and dietitians. This involves the development of innovative and sustainable food procurement, the promotion of planetary healthy diets and cooking, and the introduction of the so-called “Whole School Food Approach”, a defined framework for municipalities and schools targeting the achievement of child-friendly food culture and involving all related actors linked to the school environment.
The SF4C project started in January 2022. It includes 43 partners (including affiliates), who contribute to the ambitious target of reaching at least two million EU citizens, by directly impacting over 3,000 schools and 600,000 young people in 12 EU countries.
With a focus on children, who are the adults of the future, and strong trust in youth action competence, SchoolFood4Change strives for a long-lasting impact on the whole food system that will benefit both the people and the planet.
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The EU-funded StratKIT project is about making the procurement of public catering services more sustainable. Public authorities have a large purchasing power and have the ability to give clear signals to the market towards green growth and circular economy. However, public procurement is a complex task and good practices in the Baltic Sea region are mostly isolated. StratKIT brings together public authorities, catering service providers and researchers in a network to set up a toolkit and an online open knowledge platform for sustainable public catering.

The project is funded by the the Interreg Baltic See Region Programme.

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 Procure2Innovate project will establish or expand Competence Centres for innovation procurement in ten EU Member States. The project aims to improve institutional support and quality of advice for public procurers of information and communication technologies (ICT), and other product groups implementing innovation procurement.

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.

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.