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May 15, 2025
Council of the International Green Purchasing Network (IGPN) voted to welcome Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH to join IGPN as Advisory Broad Member.
The GIZ commit to provide effective, forward-thinking solutions to global challenges, guided by the principles of sustainability and aligned with the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement, and national development strategies. Regionally in Southeast Asia, GIZ has been a longstanding partner in advancing Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP), with particular emphasis on Green Public Procurement (GPP) and eco-labelling. As a new member of IGPN advisory broad, GIZ expect to bring its expertise and provide advice which support in a collaborative way including planning, coordination, implementation and monitoring of the Network continuous improvement.
IGPN chair, welcomed the engagement of GIZ, “Both organizations have mission to achieve global solutions for sustainable consumption and production transition. The participation of GIZ could put practical and system-level knowledge to IGPN through its long-term strategies on sustainability both in green purchasing and eco-labelling. Becoming an IGPN member will synergize and reinforce the GIZ commitment to green purchasing”.
The IGPN now has a network working across different countries and areas to promote green purchasing around the world, through its members who take the initiative in implementing green purchasing, partners with the Global Lead City Network led by ICLEI on sustainable procurement, the Global Ecolabelling Network, and collaborates with the UNEP One Planet Network Sustainable Public Procurement Programme support the implementation towards sustainable consumption and production.
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category : Announcement
May 12, 2025
The City of Espoo (Finland) has decided to transform Kera, a formerly industrial/logistic area into a sustainable city district, in line with circular economy principles. Public procurement plays a key role here, which is why the Big Buyers Working Together (BBWT) Community of Practice (CoP) on New European Bauhaus (NEB) visited it during the BBWT annual event in Helsinki.
Espoo’s work in the Kera district is founded on four key principles established in the Kera development commitment. It points out that everything should be done in close cooperation with residents and other stakeholders and that Espoo must make use of low-emission and carbon binding solutions to help its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. Furthermore, the circular economy principles should be implemented whenever possible, and the district is obliged to draw up a development plan highlighting how the solutions are implemented so that Kera can become an (inter)national reference point.
The goals of the commitment were defined in extensive cooperation with local operators and stakeholders and the city takes a similar approach in the implementation of its solutions. Although in Kera this approach is formalised, the city had positive experiences with collaborative market and citizen engagement from the past. A great example was a project focusing on the development of procurement criteria for construction plastics. To define these criteria, the city interviewed plastic suppliers as well as public authorities; based on these interviews it developed a draft it presented in an interactive workshop, representing the entire value chain, highlighting what is feasible or not and which demands can be met.
In the end, the developed criteria, which ended up being applied to Kera as well, required suppliers to collect their waste on all construction sites, track the percentage of recycled material, and get more data on it. Furthermore, the tender criteria sought to align to some extent with the national ecological criteria on plastic recycling, requiring suppliers to apply certain ecological agreements in practice.
For the NEB CoP these insights proved highly valuable. Even though the project was not planned with the NEB principles in mind it was still aligned with its values. Participants were very keen to learn about Espoo’s collaborative approaches, concluding that municipalities should engage more with the private sector as it has valuable procedural knowledge.
More details at ICLEI Sustainable Procurement Platform.
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category : Topics
May 6, 2025
Shouldn’t all children have access to a healthy meal each school day and adequate food education? With one in three children in Europe overweight or obese, and more than half of adults projected to be overweight by 2050, poor nutrition is fueling a public health crisis. But school meal programmes offer a powerful solution, ensuring students receive and are educated about proper nutrition to support their well-being and academic success.
Across Europe, over 90 million students attend schools and universities. Therefore, the provision of healthy, nutritious meals in these institutions, coupled with comprehensive food education, presents a significant opportunity to address food insecurity and reduce health disparities.
As leader of ICLEI’s Global CityFood Programme, ICLEI Europe is a strong advocate for food system transformation at local, national, and global levels, believing in the transformative power of public procurement with the market for social food services estimated at 82 billion euros. The meals served in schools and other public institutions therefore have a significant impact on our climate and public health and by leveraging our purchasing power cities and local governments can be key drivers of this change.
Cities leading the way on sustainable school meals
ICLEI and its Members drive change and counteract the obesity trend through initiatives like SchoolFood4Change (SF4C) and Buy Better Food, which promote public health with a holistic approach. By prioritising nutritious food, sourced through sustainable public procurement and paired with education, these initiatives demonstrate how local policies can accelerate the transition to a healthier food system.
As part of SF4C, several ICLEI Members are spearheading school meal transformations, including Umeå and Malmö (Sweden), Vienna (Austria), Tallinn (Estonia), Ghent (Belgium), and Copenhagen (Denmark). The impact of their actions is evident: more than 650,000 pupils are already being reached through SF4C activities, and, thanks to improved procurement processes, over 3,200 schools across 22 countries are serving healthier, more sustainable meals.
For example, Ghent has overhauled its school meal programme, increasing plant-based meals and incorporating locally sourced and organic ingredients. Meanwhile, more than 90% of the meals served in SF4C schools in Copenhagen are from organically certified products. Following the project's holistic concept to school food, the city focuses not only on putting out ambitious food tenders, but similarly on community-building and education activities. These are the kinds of activities that enable cities and regions to advance important social and political issues.
Aligning local action with European policy
These efforts align closely with the European Child Guarantee, an initiative launched by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to protect vulnerable children from social exclusion. The initiative strives to ensure access to essential services, including at least one healthy school meal a day. A recent report highlights the wide-ranging benefits of school meal programmes, reinforcing the need for continued investment in this area.
Already around half of EU Member States have integrated school meals into their National Action Plans for the EU Child Guarantee, yet there is no unified EU vision that aligns existing programmes on school nutrition across the European Commission’s Directorates-General. ICLEI Europe recently leveraged intergenerational dialogue, incorporating the voices of young people who are directly affected by school food programmes, to make this case to the European Parliament.
On International School Meals Day (13 March), European decision-makers heard directly from students about the need to have healthy school meals and food education for all children. ICLEI Europe and IFOAM Organics Europe, along with young students and city representatives, took this message to the heart of European policy making, meeting with several EU Commissioners and Members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg (France).
During this event, a delegation of schoolchildren from Germany’s Markgräfler Gymnasium in Müllheim presented two EU Commissioners, Christophe Hansen (Agriculture and Food) and Olivér Várhelyi (Health and Food Safety), with a petition of over 111,000 signatures, calling for healthy school meals paired with food education for all children. At the event, Commissioner Várhelyi highlighted the importance of early food education: “Eating habits are formed from a very young age and schools can be the place where children learn about nutrition. This requires a strong commitment from everyone involved, as school catering is the starting point for a healthy life.”
Following the discussion in Strasbourg, a second delegation of ICLEI Europe advocates accompanied a group of young people to meet in Brussels (Belgium) with Glenn Micallef, European Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport. When asked by one pupil, “If ‘food’ is so important, why do we learn so little about it at school?,” the Commissioner emphasised the importance of food literacy as a life skill and the need to integrate it into the education system.
Taken as a whole, through these meetings with high-level politicians, ICLEI has shown that several policy arenas of the European Commission unite under the topic of ‘school meals and food education’, making cooperation across different departments even more important.
Taking action: Support the movement for better school meals
The momentum for healthier, more sustainable school meals is growing, but continued action is needed to turn advocacy into lasting change. To support this effort, EU residents can sign the petition for healthy school meals for every child in every school, which already has more than 111,000 signatures. The petition’s signatures support ICLEI Europe’s call for setting an EU-wide standard for healthy school meals and food education for all children and a shared EU vision, in line with the European Child Guarantee.
Local governments, NGOs and for-profit organisations can take action by endorsing the Buy Better Food Manifesto, developed in cooperation with the EU Food Policy Coalition. The Manifesto sets clear criteria to guide cities in adopting more sustainable food procurement models, demonstrating how prioritising ingredients from small-scale and organic farmers can foster a win-win-win for public health, nature and farmers alike.
By leveraging the power of the public plate, cities and local governments can drive meaningful transformation in our food systems—ensuring a healthier and more sustainable future for Europe.
More details at ICLEI Europe website.
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category : Topics
