PPI4Waste

The PPI4Waste project – Promotion of Public Procurement of Innovation for Resource Efficiency and Waste Treatment – explored mechanisms to overcome barriers to public procurement of innovation in the waste sector.
Project co-funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme, 2015 - 2017.

{slider Introduction}

Effective waste management heavily depends on the development of new solutions for collection and treatment. Public procurement – and PPI particularly – can stimulate the market in that direction and invest in new, more efficient solutions for municipal waste management to meet European objectives.

Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI) occurs when public authorities act as an early adopter of innovative solutions which are not yet available on large scale commercial basis.

{slider The project}

The PPI4Waste project:

• Identified common needs within the public sector in Europe;
• Created an Interest Group and a Purchasing Community to exchange and collaborate on the topic of PPI4Waste;
• Implemented capacity-building workshops for cross-border public procurement of innovation;
• Promoted dynamic coordinated procurement of eco-innovative solutions in the field of resource efficiency and waste prevention, reuse and recycling;
• Promoted collaboration between the public and private sectors.

In particular, the project aimed to develop know-how on PPI procedures and make state-of-the-art solutions accessible to other procurers. In turn, this was expected to encourage a quicker market uptake of such solutions and improve the quality and efficiency of services provided by public authorities.

{slider Partners Involved}

Following the termination of the Andalusian Institute of Technology, ACR+ took the lead of the project. The project partners were:

• ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability
• Zagreb City Holding*
• University of Zaragoza
• Mancomunidad del Sur
• RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
• Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment

* ACR+ member

{slider Activities}

The PPI4Waste project covers the complete cycle of preparation activities to implement PPI in municipal waste management, separated into 4 main steps. Reports and other material have been developed to summarize and present the work conducted by PPI4waste project partners during each of these steps. This can be considered as a model for the preparation and implementation of public procurement of innovation in the waste management sector.

The project also gave the opportunity to put in contact procurers and suppliers via different types of events and created opportunities for coordinated procurement in the waste management sector.

{slider Step 1: Needs Assessment}

Project partners worked on the identification and definition of most frequent needs of public buyers in the field of municipal waste management in terms of waste-to-resource challenges or system failures (so-called ‘common needs’), with the view of drawing a map of targeted improvements and possible emerging solutions addressing these needs.

• Report on Agreeing Common Needs: this report presents the methodology designed and applied by the project consortium to prioritize the needs of public buyers and reach an agreement on the ones for which further work has been implemented within the PPI4Waste project. The five identified common needs are the following: bio-waste management, plastic separation, bulky waste management, separate collection for specific waste streams, and decision support systems for waste management.
• State of the Art of Emerging Solutions: this report gives an overall picture of the state of waste management in the European Union analysing how common needs identified during PPI4Waste project are currently addressed in the EU context and focusing on the identification of innovation solutions with high potential for PPI in the waste sector. It focused specifically on three waste fractions: bio-waste, plastic waste and bulky waste.
• Common Report on Targeted Improvments: this report presents the results of the research made regarding the PPI potential for each of the common needs and gives several recommendations regarding three aspects of PPI: the system readiness of waste management at national level, the impact of PPI at system level and the place of PPI in a policy mix.

{slider Step 2: Market Engagement}

The fragmentation of demand for innovative solutions and the lack of knowledge regarding the market situation are two well documented barriers to PPI. Thus, the project consortium brought together both the demand and supply sides to gain a better understanding of ready-to-market innovative solutions replying to needs identified at transnational level.

• Meet-the-market activities: market engagement forms a crucial part of the PPI4waste project, building on the needs assessment and feeding into a PPI roadmap which will pave the way for potential future tenders for innovative waste solutions. In order to ensure that suppliers were aware of the needs identified by procurers and waste experts within the project, a series of 4 national market engagement workshops as well as an international workshop were implemented during spring 2016.

  These workshops were intended to facilitate a dialogue between suppliers, procurers, entrepreneurs, consultants and waste experts in order to provide an overview of the current solutions available and in development, as well as giving suppliers and entrepreneurs an insight into what products and solutions they might need to develop in future.

• Desired Performance characteristics: this report defines, describes and provides examples of performance characteristics from a PPI approach and potential actions to be taken by the pilot partners Zagreb City Holding and Mancomunidad Del Sur to face challenges linked with their needs (bio-waste and plastic waste respectively). The identified actions are related to market uptake of innovative solutions, and performance characteristics are used to describe performance-based requirements of these solutions.
• Roadmap for progressive improvement: this report identifies potential actions and future interventions to be uptaken by the pilot partners, Zagreb City Holding and Mancomunidad Del Sur, in order to face their challenges regarding bio-waste and plastic waste respectively, according to their specific conditions, through market uptake of innovative solutions.

{slider Step 3: Feasibility Assessment}

After delivering the report of targeted improvements from the demand side, having analysed the market situation, as well as drafting the roadmap for improvement on functional requirements, the next step in the methodology of preparation activities for the procurement implementation is to carry out a feasibility plan to uptake a collaborative PPI and to reduce risks associated with the implementation of PPI. It includes key aspects such as financial modelling, legal framework, and risk reduction strategy.

• Preliminary Contract and financial assessment model: this guide-template of contract model identifies and explains essential clauses that have to be part of the final tenders of Mancomunidad del Sur (Spain) and Zagreb City Holding (Croatia) if they want to buy innovative solutions that are ready to be marketed.
• Common risk management strategy: this report provides an overall vision of risk management in public procurement of innovation, a brief description of the main types of risks that can be faced in these procedures and, finally, a risk management strategy in the PPI4Waste project.
• Training on PPI: as part of the PPI4waste project, a series of national training workshops are organised to help building capacity in public procurement of innovation and show how this can be applied within the municipal waste sector. Some training material is available to support the implementation of similar training activities in other territories.

The programme of the training includes the following sessions:

Brief Introduction to the PPI4waste project;
The need to innovate in municipal waste management;
An introduction to Public Procurement of Innovation;
Key Features for successful innovation procurement;
Innovative approaches to procurement in waste management;
Useful resources and approaches to PPI in waste management.

{slider Step 4: Lessons learned}

The last step provides an overview of the main lessons learned during the project and in order to help to set standards for the implementation of PPI in the waste sector.

• Consolidated report of lessons of PPI4Waste for contracting authorities: this report aims to collect the lessons learned during the project, both regarding the needs and barriers of public procurers operating in the waste sector and the possible solutions and opportunities that can be found. A key output is policy recommendations for applying public procurement of innovation in the waste sector.
• Roadmap on joint or coordinated procurement strategy: the purpose of the roadmap is to explore the options procurers have for coordinated procurement as well as joint procurement and, where relevant, map the subsequent steps to be performed for this purpose.

{slider Interest Group and Purchasing Community}

Bringing together the demand and supply side was an important element of the PPI4Waste project to increase the knowledge and drive the uptake of innovative, sustainable and ready-to-use solutions in the waste management sector across Europe.

For that, two communities have been created: the Interest Group and the Purchasing Community. The primary aim of the Interest Group was to foster knowledge and, exchange, while driving the uptake of innovative, sustainable and ready-to-use solutions in the waste management sector across Europe. The Purchasing Community was a sub-group of the PPI4Waste Interest Group consisting solely of public procurers who were interested and actively involved in the procurement of waste management solutions in the public sector.

Webinars have been organised for the members of the Interest Group:

• Experiences and insights in piloting PPI in the waste sector
• What's Waste Worth
• The European Circular Economy Package
  What does it mean for me?

The discussions between members of these communities, initiated during the project lifetime, continue to be open to new contributions via the Procurement Forum.

{slider Newsletters and Press releases}

• Newsletter 5 – November 2017
• Newsletter 4 – December 2016
• Newsletter 3 – June 2016
• Newsletter 2 – December 2015
• Newsletter 1 – July 2015

• Press Release – 14 September 2017 – PPI4Waste Final Conference
• Press Release – 03 May 2016 – International and national Meet-the-market events
• Press Release – 02 November 2015 – Launch of the Interest Group and Purchasing Community
• Press Release – 25 August 2015 – PPI4Waste Website

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