The online seminar “Circular procurement as a way to address pollution: experiences from ProCirc” took place last 18 May 2021. ACR+ members Zero Waste Scotland, Rijkswaterstaat and OVAM were some of the panelists.
The event started with an introduction by ACR+ about circular procurement and the ProCirc project. It followed with the presentation by the European Commission on the EU framework and tools for circular procurement, and in particular the existing EU Green Public Procurement (GPP) support tools, the GPP criteria and the upcoming GPP revisions.
Afterwards, Circular Flanders presented the ProCirc toolbox to help procurers in their transition towards a Circular Economy. Among those tools were the Circular procurement ambition chart, and the Life Cycle Costing tool. ProCirc pilots are currently testing and experimenting these existing tools to boost and monitor the project objectives and targets.
Rijkswaterstaat introduced the C-PRONE initiative, a long-term framework for the circular procurement community, with the aim to facilitate international exchange of insights and best practices between circular procurement initiatives, projects and networks.
The panel discussion started with an explanation from the European Commission on how the current EU framework is supporting the development of circular procurement at local and regional level. ProCirc partners, the City of Malmö and Zero Waste Scotland, gave their views from a local and regional authorities’ perspective on the existing framework and its support of the implementation of circular procurement. They agreed that the legal framework is not the main challenge to implement circular procurement but the real implementation of the legislation in practice. The Norwegian Agency for Public and Financial Management (that also shared this view), Circular Flanders and Rijkswaterstaat explained their experiences, from a national perspective, regarding the challenges they face and the opportunities they see in the implementation of circular procurement. They highlighted in particular the need for organizational change, the importance of getting/providing inspiration and the motivation to try out new ideas.
You can find the presentations and the recording here.