Joining Private and Public Forces to Overcome Common Challenges in Sustainable Procurement

CSCP brings together private and public actors to identify potential opportunities for cooperation. A workshop-series in April will allow deep-dives into key topics for defining common ground and the creation of a joint vision.

Sustainable Procurement has been a key topic for the CSCP almost since its inception. Since public procurement accounts for a major share of a country’s gross domestic product (e.g EU 16% in average, in other countries such as Brazil, China, India even exceeding 30%), it can be a major lever to make value chains more sustainable and to pull innovation at the same time.

At the same time, an increasing number of companies try to green their product portfolio or tackle social hotspots in their supply chains. The reaction to changing consumer preferences, the search for new markets, stakeholder communication aspects or in general corporate social responsibility strategies are only some of the reasons.

However, the implementation process of sustainable procurement is complex. In an applied research project, CSCP has systematically captured cluster topics of relevance for both public and private procurers in the Federal State of North-Rhine Westfalia in Germany. Now, the CSCP will evaluate potential benefits deriving from synergies or leverage effects of joint endeavours and explore a common ground in order to further implement sustainable procurement in a structured exchange process (exchange hub).

Throughout a workshop series in April, the CSCP will lead a multistakeholder process to create a joint vision between companies, governmental bodies and NGOs envisioned to be the ground work for the exchange hub. To further define technical common challenges, the following Sustainable Procurement cluster topics will be discussed in detail: digitalisation as an enabler for sustainable procurement, governance/change management, end-of-life challenges/circular material flows.

For further information, please contact Cristina Fedato.