As major procurers of food and catering services, public authorities can play a strong role in supporting sustainable production and distribution practices in the sector. By carefully integrating the impact of the food they purchase into procurement decisions, public authorities can significantly contribute to supporting environmental improvements in the sector whilst providing a nutritious diet to beneficiaries and supporting targeted producers. However, there is a lack of overview to which extend procurement can have a sustainable influence at which stage of the food value chain. ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability embarks on a new project as part of the UN One Planet Network SPP Programme. The main objective of the project is to provide an overview of procurement along the food value chain and understand how it addresses key hotspots towards shaping the sustainability of food production and consumption.
The ambition is to develop a set of recommendation and case studies written for procurers as well as policy-makers from across the globe, featuring an array of approaches from actors procuring food along the food value chain. In addition, findings and lessons learned will be consolidated in a set of recommendations.

Video on circular procurement pilots conducted in Latvia as part of the Circular PP project.

Between 2017 and 2020, Aalborg (Denmark, Malmö (Sweden), and Smiltene and Pļaviņas (Latvia) piloted innovative new approaches to buying circular goods and services as part of the Circular PP project. Their experiences have been collected in this report, which provides a highly useful guide for any other public buyers interested in trying out circular procurement. A summary version is also available.

First video of a video series on socially responsible public procurement (SRPP) and its positive social outcomes, produced within the #WeBuySocialEU project.
It demonstrates how public buyers can promote employment opportunities, decent work, social inclusion, accessibility, design for all, ethical trade, and seek to achieve wider compliance with social standards.

GPP Case Study- The City of Vienna prepares about 100,000 meals every day for kindergartens, schools, medical and nursing facilities and home delivery for pensioners. In 2019, a new framework contract for the supply and delivery of “earthy vegetables”, referring to vegetables growing directly in or on the soil, was needed to supply city-run nursing homes.The City wanted to encourage food sustainability along the entire supply chain, from production to delivery. This included requiring the seedlings to be certified as organic, to encourage suppliers to grow young plants in their own nurseries, using renewable energy, asking for producers to only use organic compost as fertiliser, and finally to encourage bidders to reduce packaging and transportation distance as well as to use low emission transport. All bidders were able to fulfil the criteria, and the winning bidder now provides city nursing homes with 100% certified organic produce.

A report, published by the European Commission, collecting 71 good practice cases on how public buyers have implemented socially responsible public procurement (SRPP), in order to promote employment opportunities, decent work, social inclusion, accessibility, ethical trade, design for all and seeking to achieve wider compliance with social standards.

EC GPP Case Study - The City of Helsingborg applied an open procedure for a framework agreement for a wholesaler who could provide €690,000 worth of food for schools and nursing
homes. The City wanted to ensure that the wholesaler was capable of providing sustainably certified food (i.e. organic or responsible produced palm oil), which is nutritious, ethical, and delivered in packaging that would be easy to recycle.

EC GPP Case Study - Helsinki Service Centre aimed at improving their operations of food transportation to become more customer-friendly and reliable, save costs, significantly reduce the environmental impact of their operations. Three separate calls for tender were published that jointly cover all food transportation and logistics for Helsinki Service Centre.

The report compiles procurement case studies from across the HCWH Europe network, covering a variety of products and services such as food, plastics, and mobility. Case studies from Vienna, Catalonia, Sweden, The Netherlands, and more all showcase progressive innovation, and a more holistic and strategic approach to procurement, as well as highlighting the challenges and opportunities for the future. These case studies also offer a varied perspective of initiatives from differing levels of administration – from the individual hospital or regional level to national legislative efforts or international collaboration.