Procurement cases

Buyer: City of Copenhagen

Need: Diaper waste is a large bulk of the residual waste in many European countries. To reach the EU goals that EU Member States must recycle or prepare for reuse at least 60% of their municipal waste by 2030, diaper waste can be a significant fraction to target and find a recycling solution for. Therefore, the City of Copenhagen formed a needs statement for treatment of diaper waste. The need covers the receipt and processing of the municipality’s diaper waste with the aim of maximising recycling, and the disposal/handling of any waste fractions from treatment of the diaper waste.

Cross-border interest: Only a scarce few diaper recycling facilities (with different techniques) are located around the world and no facility is located in the Baltic Sea Region. Depositing diaper waste to an already established recycling facility would require extensive use of transports. However, to get someone to establish a recycling facility in the Copenhagen region, the public authorities need to prove that such a facility could be profitable. Hence, they need to show that they can collect a minimum 10 000 tonnes of diaper waste in their tender.

Pre-studies in the City of Copenhagen have shown they have the ability to sort and collect diaper waste both in preschools and households to an estimated amount of 5 000 tonnes. They therefore needed other public authorities in Denmark, Norway and Sweden to show interest in using the facility, if built. Such interest was found, and Letters of Intent (LoIs) from one other Danish municipality and four Swedish municipalities were attached to the tender.

InnoBroker services: The City of Copenhagen already had a clearly formulated need and the BRINC project has added value by facilitating the cross-border connections both to public authorities and the business sector. The project connected the City of Copenhagen to other interested PAs in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, both through a webinar and through one-on-one meetings, and assisted in obtaining LoIs to complement the tender documentation. Also, the projects networks were used to spread the word to businesses of the upcoming tender, so that they have the chance to build a consortium to be able to put in offers once published.

Buyer: Parkering Malmö

Need: Public buyers are committed to creating a circular economy by buying products, services, and infrastructure that are designed, used, and operated to maximise value and minimise waste, reducing demand for primary resources, lowering carbon emissions, and allowing the regeneration of natural systems. ECOS (Environmental Coalition on Standards) who work on the communication standards needed for smart charging have published this guide for public authorities in 2023. In it they explain the benefits of smart charging, the standards needed and provide recommendations regarding the implementation of standards and the upgradability (which they see as key for circularity).

In a prior EU-funded project, ProCirc, new innovative demands were formulated in a joint statement of demands on EVCs, and Parkering Malmö wanted to integrate some of them in an upcoming tender. This to fulfill their need of procuring more circular and sustainable EVCs.

Cross-border interest: To reach sustainability goals, countries in Europe are increasing the use of electric vehicles but also the charging infrastructure needs to be sustainable, if to meet the goals. The joint statement of demands shows a cross-border interest among public authorities on pushing the EVC market forward towards a more circular and sustainable product. Hence, the outcome of Parkering Malmös tender has high interest among the ProCirc organisations signing the statement, but could also reach further as it is of interest for all countries increasing their use of electric vehicles.

InnoBroker services: Parkering Malmö wanted to get knowhow from other public authorities on how to incorporate the joint demands in a tender and BRINC set up a cross-border dialogue meeting to facilitate that. Finding that several of the demands in the joint statement had not been incorporated in any tender, Parkering Malmö wanted to have a pre-tender market dialogue and tapping into the SME connections in the clusters, BRINC arranged such a meeting. The outcome of the meeting was that Parkering Malmö knew just how far they could push the market in their tender demands.

Buyer: Institut Català de la Salut (ICS)

Need: To ensure the safety of patients and their workers, large quantities of health safety materials and single-use personal protection are used, items which must be discarded once they have fulfilled their purpose. In the 8 hospitals managed by the ICS, on average, large quantities of disposable sanitary safety items are consumed every month: 60,000 gowns; 30,000 aprons; 200,000 surgical drapes, sheets, and other cloths; 1,000,000 masks; 17,000,000 gloves; and 400,000 caps, pants, gloves, overalls and other protective equipment. Once used only once, these materials are rejected as group II sanitary waste, destined to landfill, despite the fact that they are high-quality materials with many opportunities for recovery.

ICS needs ways to recycle these single-use sanitary safety materials. When they contacted BRINC they had recently published a preliminary market consultation hoping to find one business able to treat the entire volume of their mixed non-hazardous waste. However, the call only received one substandard response.

Cross-border interest: During BRINC events, several hospitals and public entities in charge of hospitals raised interest in reducing their waste. Hence, the outcome of ICS tender is of interest to all of them. In addition, SMEs in the clusters in BRINC have shown interest to expand their solutions cross-border but have found it difficult to communicate with their potential buyers.

InnoBroker services: BRINC put ICS in contact with several other public authorities implementing innovative solutions to reduce and recycle sanitary waste in their hospitals (Ghent University Hospital) or that are looking for solutions (Navarra Health Service). Following BRINC’s efforts to establish cross-border joint dialogue meetings and one-on-one discussion among public buyers, as well as organising cross-border pre-tender market dialogues with potential suppliers, ICS decided to target specific single-use sanitary products: blood collection tubes, and sterilization wraps.

The eight hospitals managed by ICS are: Arnau de Vilanova University Hospital, Bellvitge University Hospital, Germans Trias i Pujol University Hospital, Joan XXIII University Hospital, Josep Trueta University Hospital, Tortosa Verge de la Cinta Hospital, Viladecans Hospital)