On 25 February three partner municipalities, Leeuwarden (NL), Coimbra (PT) and Novo Mesto (SI), and a network of regions, SERN (BE) were online to launch the project CircLocal: a Circular Community. Ewout Oppers, covered the role of Project Leader, speaking for the leading partner Gemeente Leeuwarden.
The project lasting one year focusses on setting up circular and social tender processes and involving the market in the exchange of best practices. Thus, persevering in its purpose to continue and grow the Community of local public authorities working on circular procurement.
In other words, CircLocal aims for a transition towards a social and circular economy. In this transition, every group from the quadruple helix has an important role to play. While innovation can come from businesses and new knowledge from universities, consumers can fasten the transition by changing their preferences for consumer goods. There is also an important role for, public authorities to play. Not only through law and regulation, but also by setting a new standard for procurement that sparks innovation, increases awareness and lowers climate impact.
However, ambitions in terms of public procurement reach much further nowadays. In these regions, the ambition is to use social and circular public procurement in order to meet social and environmental targets. And as a consortium, we want to establish a road map for every public partner individually that fits with the current situation, recognizing circular procurements as a key driver towards a circular economy model.
Moreover, to answer the challenge, CircLocal will set-up local/regional level workshops in which local stakeholders related to the social and circular economy mission will be invited and the content disseminated to all the interested public authorities and social/circular economy associate.
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