Within the Big Buyers Working Together (BBWT) project, a Community of Practice (CoP) focused on the New European Bauhaus (NEB) is the first European initiative to explore meaningful links between the NEB and sustainable public procurement. This CoP, led by ICLEI Europe, kicked off recently with a webinar that explored cases of how sustainable public procurement can help advance the NEB principles.

Eytan Levi of Roofscapes explained how a tender of the City of Paris (France) enabled his organisation to transform pitched and slanted roofs in the city into green and accessible spaces. In the context of climate change, green roofs are especially important as they can help cool the city. At the same time they provide green spaces for the inhabitants of the building and have a positive impact on biodiversity.

In the second case study, the Mayor of Beclean (Romania) Nicolae Moldovan highlighted the prize-winning Legacy Recreation Center in his city. The project is aimed at the inclusion of people with social needs, allowing them to find a diversity of recreational, social and leisure activities in one place. The centre includes a library, a yoga centre, fitness, bowling, a sports hall, two swimming pools.

The BBWT project supports collaboration between public buyers with strong purchasing power and promotes the wider use of strategic public procurement for innovative and sustainable solutions. It is comprised of 10 CoPs coordinated by ICLEI Europe alongside Eurocities and BME on behalf of the European Commission. Each CoP is devoted to the purchase of a specific product, work or service where European collaboration is needed with the aim of developing more strategic and innovative procurement approaches.

In addition to the NEB, ICLEI leads three additional CoP’s in BBWT, namely Social Procurement, Heavy Duty Electric Vehicles and Sustainable Solar. More information about these communities can be found on the Public Buyers Community Platform. In addition, The European Commission recently produced a deep dive on the work of the Sustainable Solar CoP including a news article on the key challenges of the group in the context of the current EU-wide shift towards renewable energy, a factsheet that provides more info on the mission, key strategies and objectives of the group, and an introductory video.

Public authorities who want to join a CoP are welcome to express their interest by sending an email to the Big Buyers Working Together Secretariat. They can also register for the Big Buyers Working Together annual event, taking place in Brussels (Belgium) on 24 April.

Watch the webinar in full here.