The Danish State procurement authority has signed an exclusive procurement contract with the furniture brand Duba-B8, whereby all office furniture must be able to be disassembled into parts and reused several times.
Circular Gothenburg focuses on resource efficiency to reduce climate change and achieve circular material flows.
It has three target groups: citizens, city departments and businesses. For all three target groups, the goal is to make it simple, straightforward and attractive to participate in transformational circular work. This includes the municipality’s in-house processes and activities which help people to live in a more circular way. One of these activities is the Fixotek: staffed facilities, close to where people live and open to everyone, where people can meet, learn, repair and redesign products, borrow tools and swap toys, clothes and books.
Mutualia, a social services and medical care provider in the Basque Country, Spain, has installed water fountains connected to the public water network to use tap water instead of buying bottled water.
In 2018, Hjørring Municipality decided to embark on a pilot project to increase the recovery and recycling of bricks when procuring demolition services for two buildings at the end of their functional life. Once cleared, the sites were destinated to be a part of a new climate adaptation project including a new rainwater collection basin and a recreational area.
The city of Ludwigsburg in Germany has a sustainable development strategy that includes the use of procurement to achieve its sustainability goals, instructing all public procurement departments to follow “Cradle to Cradle”principles in their procurement and awarding criteria.
In 2018, the Croatian city of Koprivnica needed to replace a prefabricated kindergarten. Instead of demolishing the building entirely, Koprivnica opted for Green Public Procurement (GPP) and aimed to maintain as much of the physical structure as possible, while refurbishing and improving it.
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 collated in this report, which is a very useful guide for public buyers interested in trying out circular procurement. A summary of the report is also available.
The main results and lessons from six public procurement pilot schemes are outlined in the report:
Buying back ICT equipment (City of Aalborg)
Outdoor learning environment tender (City of Aalborg)
As part of the Circular Public Procurement project, the City of Aalborg (Denmark) has established a new innovative approach to buying playgrounds, based on the principles of a circular economy, as well as grounded in a pedagogical understanding of creative play as an important part of a child’s development.
