Procurers from Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands took home the 2016 Procura+ Awards at a ceremony in Malmච(Sweden) last night. The awards recognise the most outstanding procurement activities carried out in Europe in three categories. The award ceremony was held as part of the Sustainable City Development conference, an international event exploring how cities can work towards implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The City of Copenhagen (Denmark) beat off competition in the category "Sustainable procurement of the year" for its procurement of healthy, sustainable, biodiverse and appetising food. The city aims to ensure that 90 percent of all food procured by the municipality should be organic. Transport for London was awarded "Innovation procurement of the year". The British capital's public transport operator sought to reduce the whole life-cycle cost associated with lighting the expansive London Underground network. Rijkswaterstaat (RWS), the body within the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment responsible for infrastructure facilities, was recognised in the category "Tender procedure of the year". RWS used an innovative contract to procure the works and services necessary to widen the A6 motorway.

"I would like to congratulate each award winner for their fantastic achievement. Each organisation has demonstrated how procurement can be used as a valuable tool to achieve strategic sustainability aims," said à…sa Karlsson Bjà¶rkmarker, Deputy Mayor, Và¤xjà¶. The Procura+ Awards are held as part of ICLEI Europe's Procura+ Network, a network of public authorities at the forefront of sustainable and innovation procurement in Europe.

For more information, read the Press Release.Image copyright: Image (ICLEI) more   29 November 2016 InnProBio project issues its third newsletter with updates on bio-based productsThe InnProBio team released its third newsletter, including updates on the progress and the outcomes of the project, as well as other news related to the topic of bioeconomy. InnProBio is an EU-funded three-year project which began in March 2015 and aims to develop a community of public procurement practitioners interested in innovative bio-based products and services.

The "Project news" section introduces two of the three factsheets developed in InnProBio: one on sustainability of bio-based products, and the other on biodegradability. The consortium has also mapped the existing tools for bio-based products and services in public procurement to help facilitate the public purchase of bio-based products and services. The resulting document is featured in the newsletter.

The launch of the bio-based products' database developed by the Open-Bio project is contained in the "Other news" section. This tool presents various items which are relevant for public procurers, and are sorted by application area, product type and Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) code.

To view the newsletter, click here.Image copyright: Image (Pixabay) more

» Publication Date: 01/12/2016

» Source: Iclei Europe

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