ICLEI Members Utrecht (The Netherlands), Malmö (Sweden), and Ghent (Belgium), along with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy of the Netherlands are the four winners of the 2022 Procura+ Awards. The Awards were given out at the Procura+ Seminar, hosted by the Municipality of Schaerbeek (Belgium). The seminar, organised by ICLEI Europe and carried out in collaboration with the COACH project (in which ICLEI is a partner) showcased the key role of sustainable public procurement in the green transition, with a special focus on farm-to-to fork procurement.
The City of Utrecht won an Award in the category Sustainable Procurement of the Year, for applying far-reaching social and sustainable criteria in its food procurement to ensure sustainable, circular, high quality food products for its citizens, reduce packaging and residual flows, and minimise food waste. The Irish Prison Service, which conducted a tender for the removal and recycling or repurposing of discarded mattresses across all 12 of its prisons was a finalist in this category.
Three finalists competed in the newly established Circular Procurement of the Year category, highlighting the increasingly successful uptake of circular procurement projects throughout Europe. ICLEI member Tampere (Finland), the City of Quimper (France) and the City of Malmö (Sweden) were all finalists with Malmö taking the award. Through the Circular PP project, Malmö has piloted the procurement of “non-new furniture” for its city hall. The city has now replicated this circular approach to road and navigation signs.
Aiming to use locally renewable energy in its public buildings, the City of Ghent (Belgium), in cooperation with Vlaams Energiebedrijf – VEB (the Flemish Energy Company) - set up a virtual power purchase agreement (PPA) for electricity from renewable energy with a citizen energy cooperative. For this project Ghent and VEB received the Award in the Procurement Initiative of the Year category. The other finalist, ICLEI Member Copenhagen (Denmark) was recognised for its ambitious plans to increase the market availability and public procurement of fossil- and emission-free Non Road Mobile Machinery (NRMM).
Finally, The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy received the Award in the category Innovation Procurement of the Year for challenging the workspace hardware market with its IWR 2021 project. The project included in its scope all ICT hardware for the national offices and employees of the central government, applying sustainability and circularity criteria to all tenders in this category. In doing so, the project set a new standard in the field. For its development of the Procurement Planning Platform (PPP), serving as a backbone for a strategic sourcing approach towards sustainability and innovation, ICLEI Member Lisbon (Portugal) was recognised as a finalist in this category
More info about this year's Procura+ Award winners and finalists can be found here.