In 2018 Cenex Nederland was approached by Rijkswaterstaat (Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management) and PIANOo (Expertise centre for public procurement) to support their involvement with a new initiative to organise a series of workshops, creating a Learning network, on Climate Neutral and Circular procurement. The learning network was one of the activities that the government financed from the Climate Envelope in 2018 to promote climate-neutral and circular procurement with governments.

The initiative’s purpose was to provide public purchasers with a means to learn and exchange knowledge on a variety of different topics or products types. Each group would focus on one specific topic or product type. Cenex Nederland was asked to support the workshops for ICT. The goal of the this learning network is to help public organizations with circular procurement of ICT and thereby stimulate the application of reuse of raw materials and CO2 reduction. And to do this by making use of knowledge and resources that are already available and by creating handles in the prelude to follow-up steps in the long term.

Together with Rijkswaterstaat 4 workshops were organised between July and December, each workshop focusing on a different topic of interest to the Learning network’s participants. Guest speakers and discussions were part of each workshop, with specific opportunities to spotlight good examples or discussing certain key questions the participants were running into, such as what room to manoeuvre the (EU and national) procurement legislation allows, embedding circular procurement in your organisation and with internal stakeholders, how to use or not to use criteria and wrapping up with a market-dialogue with a variety of suppliers.

The results of these 4 workshops were bundled into a summary which has now been published via the PIANOo website.. You can download the summary report here (in Dutch).

Although for 2019 there was no new series of workshops funded, the network has continued to stay in touch and is now followed up with an international initiative under Transform Together – The 2030 Initiative for Sustainable Consumption and Production. More on this initiative and our contribution to follow later.