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April 7, 2026
The "Alibaba 'Scope 3+' Avoided Emissions Implementation Guidelines" was officially released lately, with the technical support provided by the China Environmental United Certification Center (CEC) throughout the entire process.
The guidelines systematically elaborate on the concept, boundaries, classification framework, and implementation principles of "Scope 3+" emissions, provide practical pathways for scientific accounting, digital management, professional verification, ecosystem collaboration, and disclosure.
Over the past five years, CEC worked closely with Alibaba, jointly advancing the practice and development of "Scope 3+" avoided emissions, actively participated in international standard-setting processes, particularly in the "Guidelines for Avoided Emissions 2.0" released by World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the exploration of impact accounting for “GHG Protocol”. In the meantime, both committed to continuously promoting pilot experiences from China, helping to establish avoided emissions as a credible and universally applicable narrative language for climate performance, and integrating it into global climate governance.
More details at CEC news center.
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March 30, 2026
To boost the printing consumables industry’s commitment to sustainability, China Environmental United Certification Center (CEC), launched the project of “Green Supply Chain Improvement Study for the Printing Consumables Industry” in June 2025, with support from the “Green Printing Compaign for Zero-Waste Cities” initiated by Taotian Group’s 3C Digital Sector, Alibaba Philanthropy, and the Beijing Entrepreneurs’ Foundation for Environmental Protection. The project aims to steer the industry toward eco-friendly procurement, pushing upstream suppliers to adopt greener practices and strengthening the supply chain against global trade and national environmental issues.
<Green and low-carbon procurement guide for the printing consumables industry>, a key project outcome, was formally released by the project team, in collaboration with Zhuhai Printing Consumables Industry Association, at a training workshop focused on boosting green supply chain capabilities lately. Tailored to the specific needs and capabilities of printing consumables manufacturers and their supply chain partners including producers of toner cartridges, ink cartridges, ribbons, raw materials, and components, the Guide built on the core principles of “proactive accountability and continuous improvement”, emphasizes on practical, company-specific solutions, steers businesses toward building sustainable partnerships with suppliers and positioning green procurement as a vital pillar of regulatory compliance and competitive advantage. The Guide provides clear benchmarks for key areas like eco-friendly materials, product design, and supplier environmental management, offering a roadmap to embed sustainability into procurement. It advises companies to set green standards, assess suppliers’ environmental performance, prioritize renewable materials and recyclable designs, and reduce packaging—ensuring low-carbon goals are woven into every stage of procurement.
More details at CEC website.
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March 23, 2026
Procura+ participant Las Rozas de Madrid is seeking to transform its innovation policy, transitioning from a Smart City approach to an Intelligent Community model. In doing so, they will change their relationship with suppliers, moving away from a business-as-usual approach.
The city’s new approach will have a stronger focus on sustainability and innovation, requiring suppliers to achieve a 5% annual reduction in CO2 emissions through innovative solutions. In addition, suppliers will be obligated to comply with a dedicated and compulsory chapter on innovation clauses.
With this policy, the municipality would like to create an open innovation programme, where big contractors, through the innovation clauses, can include smaller actors and SMEs into the contract. Potentially this approach could also make it easier to engage with international innovative start-ups who are currently unable to access the complicated Spanish procurement bureaucracy.
Las Rozas de Madrid has developed a shared guidance to support other municipalities in replicating their innovative procurement model. The document can be found here. More information about the municipality’s work can be found here.
Learn more at ICLEI sustainable procurement platform.
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March 19, 2026
Every year across the European Union (EU), public buyers spend two trillion Euro (15 percent of the EU’s GDP), purchasing works, goods and services. Translating to 15 percent of the EU’s GDP, public procurement has massive potential to be used as a key tool for the advancement of social, sustainable, circular and innovation policies.
In the current geopolitical context the EU also sees public procurement as a tool that can bolster its resilience, competitiveness and (economic) security. European Commission (EC) president Ursula von der Leyen has called for an ambitious revision of the EU’s public procurement directives to introduce “made in Europe” criteria, with the goal of strengthening and scaling up EU production capabilities in crucial sectors.
From compliance tool to policy instrument
In 2014 the EC developed Public Procurement Directives to simplify procedures, provide more flexibility for contracting authorities, and to promote fair access to all economic operators, including Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Their objective was to enable public authorities to use their buying power to secure the best value for money while improving environmental sustainability, social inclusion and innovation.
Nonetheless, a recent evaluation highlights the limits of the current framework where between 2011 and 2021 the share of awards based solely on lowest price increased, with 55 percent of procurement procedures in the EU using the lowest price as the only award criterion in their contracts.
Strengthening EU competitiveness
Equating ‘value for money’ with the lowest price is a short-sighted practice that hampers innovation, weakens strategic investment, and limits long-term value creation.
As Dominique Sandy, Head of ICLEI Europe’s Sustainable and Innovation Procurement Team, argues: “at a moment when EU budgets are constrained and global competition is intensifying, we cannot let public procurement underperform as a policy instrument. A revised procurement framework that makes sustainable procurement the norm would help translate the Union’s industrial, climate and resilience ambitions into concrete outcomes on the ground.”
Cities as key actors in the EU procurement ecosystem
To work towards these goals effectively cities need to develop capacity, specialised skills, and know-how. Consequently the new framework should support and promote the creation of city-level spend analytics and foresight capabilities that can map where municipal money flows and identify opportunities for more sustainable, innovative and/or resilient options. Public procurement needs to become a core pillar of EU missions and city-focused initiatives such as the Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission and the New European Bauhaus.
Within the Big Buyers Working Together project, aiming to support collaboration between public buyers with strong purchasing power and to promote the wider use of public procurement for innovative and sustainable solutions, ICLEI Europe is leading a Community of Practice seeking to integrate the NEB principles within sustainable public procurement. These initiatives help translate political commitments into concrete locally-replicable actions on the ground and support dialogue between cities and industry to ensure that value-based criteria are realistic, innovation-friendly and scalable.
As hubs of economic activity and innovation, cities play a central role in implementing strategic public procurement for the transition to succeed. Their investment potential in sectors such as energy, transport, circular economy and buildings is key to create sustainable, lead markets.
Better leveraging EU funding through procurement
ICLEI Europe proposes that the revised Directives strengthen public procurement as a core delivery mechanism for EU priorities through a number of legislative reforms. These should support cities to fulfil their potential as promoters and implementers of strategic public procurement. They include the introduction of mandatory green criteria in high-impact categories, strengthening of Socially Responsible Public Procurement (SRPP) through reserved contracts for social enterprises, due diligence and mandatory social criteria, and the operationalisation of Life Cycle Costing through standardised EU methodologies.
Reframing “value for money” to include lifecycle performance, resilience, social and environmental value, and ensuring that quality-based criteria are the default in tenders in strategic sectors, would enable procurement to translate EU funding into measurable impact, aligned with the Union’s objectives.
Turning dialogue into delivery
The forthcoming revision of the Public Procurement Directive - expected in June 2026 - represents a key opportunity to strengthen the framework and better align it with the EU’s policy ambitions. In its contribution to the European Commission’s public consultation on the new directives, ICLEI Europe underlines the important role of cities and regions as launch customers, recognising their combined expertise in climate, social policy and innovation, and emphasises how public procurement should be used a tool to translate EU ambitions into locally workable practice.
Through initiatives such as its City-Industry Dialogue series and its Procura+ Network, ICLEI Europe continues to demonstrate how policy reform, market engagement and local delivery can reinforce each other. These activities show that supporting cities in their implementation of strategic procurement practices can help Europe remain competitive while staying transparent, fair and legally secure.
Read ICLEI Europe’s contribution to the EU procurement directive consultation at the ICLEI Europe website here.
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March 16, 2026
A new article has been published on environmental sustainability and school food procurement in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs):
Promoting environmental sustainability through school food procurement in low- and middle-income countries: critical reflections
Luana F. J. Swensson & Florence Tartanac
Frontiers in Nutrition
The paper reflects on the growing interest in“planet-friendly”and“sustainable” school meal programmes and explores the often underexamined procurement-related bottlenecks that countries face when attempting to operationalize environmental sustainability objectives through school feeding. In particular, it discusses challenges related to:
-defining environmental sustainability for food,
-translating sustainability objectives into procurement criteria and verification mechanisms, and
-managing trade-offs and synergies with existing social, economic, nutrition and health objectives—especially in LMIC contexts.
While the focus is on school food procurement, many of the reflections are relevant to broader public food procurement debates.
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March 9, 2026
A new collaboration opportunity under the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) Business Acceleration Services aims to strengthen global innovation procurement. Public buyers outside the European Union seeking cutting-edge solutions can now connect directly with over 6,000 innovative start-ups, covering key sectors such as the green transition, health and advanced digital technologies.
The European Innovation Council (EIC) is backing Europe’s most innovative and disruptive deep tech startups and SMEs, through the SPIN4EIC project. Supported by ICLEI Europe, the initiative is dedicated to enhancing innovators’ ability to access procurement markets both in Europe and worldwide through training, matchmaking, and free hands-on assistance. As part of its work in SPIN4EIC, ICLEI is supporting EIC-backed innovators to access global procurement opportunities. Collaboration with the global network allows the identification of possible tender opportunities to procure innovative solutions worldwide.
The initiative has already demonstrated impact through collaborations with global partners, including:
EIC-backed AquaB Nanobubble Innovations Ltd, a deep-tech company that delivers electrostriction-based nanobubble solutions for oil and water treatment, recently signed a landmark commercial agreement with Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s largest energy companies. Read the full Success Story!
Public buyers interested in sharing tender notices and/or information on relevant platforms where tender opportunities are published, and in connecting directly with innovative start-ups to address their needs, are invited to contact the ICLEI Europe procurement team (procurement@iclei.org) for an introductory meeting.
To learn more about SPIN4EIC check out the following channels: EIC Innovation Procurement Programme LinkedIn group, Buyers group on Public Buyers Community, SPIN4EIC website, and Newsletter.
Learn more at ICLEI sustainable procurement platform webpage.
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March 2, 2026
This good practice highlights that developing and incorporating gender-related criteria into ecolabels and certification schemes can strengthen efforts to promote equal pay, non-discrimination, fair treatment, and equitable opportunities for career advancement across supply chains. In the context of public procurement, integrating such criteria — including through the use of ecolabels and certifications — provides a practical pathway for governments to support suppliers that adopt gender-inclusive practices and to align purchasing decisions with national and international commitments to gender equality. Relevant examples include FSC, OEKO-TEX STeP, Fairtrade, ChileCompra, Colombia Compra Eficiente, Brazil’s Public Procurement and Contracting Law, and Mexico’s Public Sector Procurement Law.
This series of good practices reflects experiences on ecolabelling, sustainable public procurement, or the joint use of ecolabelling and sustainable public procurement that have demonstrated positive impacts on fostering sustainable consumption and production — for this reason, they are called "good practices.” These good practices aim to promote global exchange by providing information and examples of various approaches that entities from different countries and contexts can apply to strengthen the use of ecolabels and sustainable public procurement. They were developed as an outcome of the Working Group on Ecolabelling from the Consumer Information Programme, under the One Planet network, and the EcoAdvance project, jointly implemented by the German Cooperation for Development (GIZ), the United Nations for Environmental Protection (UNEP), and the Oeko Institute, funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUKN), and the International Climate Initiative (IKI).
Learn more at One Planet Network knowledge webpage.
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February 24, 2026
The Irish Office of Government Procurement (OGP) sought to develop a framework contract for remanufactured notebook computers to advance sustainability through shared services, efficient resource use and standardisation. The contract aimed to build on the previous framework by ensuring access to high quality remanufactured Windows Notebook Computers at the most economically advantageous cost for all Framework Clients, promoting and encouraging SME participation, and supporting the environmental ambitions of the Irish Government.
To achieve this, the OGP developed a series of award criteria requiring suppliers to reduce waste, minimise the demand for raw materials, use less energy than manufacturing new products, support circular economy principles and ensure cost savings between 25% and 40%, as remanufactured computers should be much cheaper than equivalent new ones. After three attempts the framework contract was eventually awarded to a single supplier, an Irish SME in consortium with a UK based remanufacturer.
The first attempt included as a standalone lot on a Framework that also provided for new devices. Three bids were received on the lot, however only one was compliant so a multi-supplier framework could not be established. The second attempt failed due to an insufficient number of compliant bids being received to enable the establishment of a multi-supplier framework. The OGP believes the unsuccesful attempts can be contributed to lack of experience among suppliers of ICT products in bidding for public contracts, and too difficult specifications around services, warranty, device quality, scale, availability, and standards.
For more details on the development of the tender and the main lessons learnt, take a look at the in-depth case study featured in the GPP Helpdesk.
Learn more at ICLEI sustainable procurement platform webpage.
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February 10, 2026
WACKER is one of the few producers outside China manufacturing high-purity polysilicon – a key material for solar cell production. The company can demonstrate that all its materials are responsibly sourced. At the same time, solar modules using cells made from WACKER’s polysilicon are only marginally more expensive than modules based on supply chains fully located in China.
The Big Buyers Working Together (BBWT) Community of Practice (CoP) on Sustainable Solar visited WACKER’s Burghausen site to gain insights into how risks such as forced labor in the global solar supply chain can be minimized and what cost implications this entails.
While it is technically impossible to link every batch of silicon metal to a specific batch of polysilicon, WACKER has full control and transparency of every material which enters its processes. This is ensured through strict supplier controls, Ecovadis-based requirements, and full disclosure of quartz sources. Furthermore, each pallet of polysilicon is traceable to the customer who received it, enabling module manufacturers and ultimately buyers to confirm that the polysilicon used in their modules comes from WACKER.
Suppliers of silicon metal must provide a formal self-declaration confirming the origin of quartz used in their production. This decla ration includes disclosure of the quartz source, confirmation of its origin, and responses to WACKER’s sustainability and compliance questionnaires. Only suppliers meeting these requirements, together with Ecovadis documentation, are approved. Since silicon metal is typically produced near quartz mines, sourcing outside China is essential for a sustainable and responsible supply chain.
WACKER’s sustainable approach results in only a minimal cost increase: approximately €0.022 per watt-peak, translating to less than €0.001 per kWh. The price difference between a regular module and one using WACKER’s polysilicon is therefore negligible, making it easier for public buyers to justify choosing ethical and sustainable solutions.
For Europe’s solar industry to grow, clear signals of demand for sustainable solar panels are needed – through public procurement requirements or subsidies. The CoP emphasizes that carbon footprint criteria alone are insufficient, as some manufacturers can report low-carbon values or offset emissions through certificates. Berlin’s experience with traceability criteria and supplier declarations could serve as best-practice examples for other public buyers.
Learn more at ICLEI Sustainable procurement platform webpage.
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