Circular procurement is highly prioritized topic on the agenda in many Danish business support organisations, municipalities and companies. Accordingly, 9th of September online webinar on Circular tenders and circular reorganization of tendering practices of collected waste resources at recycling sites found place. The online event was organized in mutual cooperation between project partners of 2 Interreg co-funded projects: Circular Public Procurement (co-funded by Interreg BSR) and ProCirc ( co-funded by Interreg NSR). Event gathered more than 40 participants representing both private and public sector.
The main aim of the event was to create dialogue between procurers, suppliers, business support organisations and Ecolabelling Denmark in order to uncover and learn to implement strategic circular aims to practice and identify and discuss main obstacles for SMEs to bid on circular public tenders.
The event provided platform to share different experiences with circular public tenders from different municipalities – among other the 2 pilots in City of Aalborg about circular playground and life extension of ICT- as well as best practice to work on circular public procurement strategy in municipalities.
At the same time SMEs together with The Danish Chamber of Commerce had a chance to provide the company perspective and recommendations for municipalities to increase the amount of qualified bids on their circular tenders. Questions discussed were recommendations to lower tender thresholds, need to ask for previous experience in the sector, division of the tenders in smaller contracts, reduce the amount of documentation in the bidding stage and significance of a market dialogue to ensure appropriate requirements to the market situation.
At the last session of the event Kolding municipality introduced their challenge within collected waste sector. The challenge was discussed though pitches of 2 qualified SMEs BurntWood (upcycling of wooden products) and Convert (upcycling of textile products) showcasing their business models. The main focus of this market dialogue was to uncover potential for new business models within collected waste sector.
Most of the participants responded to evaluation form, that they were very satisfied with the framework of this event and in the result of their participation have improved knowledge level on circular public tenders. Is was a common acknowledgment that market dialogue is a significant part in every circular public tenders to be aware on existent business models and providing place for development of new business models to address the challenge of municipality.
As expected many of the participants had a high level of knowledge about circular procurement before the seminar. Even this was the case the participants gained new knowledge and better understanding of circular tenders. All in all, the participants were very satisfied with the seminar.
If you want to see the video of webinar, you can find it in Danish via link here.
