All children and young people go to school. It is the place where they usually spend much of their time. They need good food to grow, concentrate and stay healthy. They also have the right to healthy, adequate, safe and sustainably produced food and good health in order to reach their full potential.
School food is an essential service provided by local governments in many countries. School catering represents a significant share of the procurement budget of many local governments. For example, the Municipality of Copenhagen (Denmark) has 80 large kitchens (with an average budget of €70,000 per year) and serves 20,000 meals a day to its schools. Today’s food systems account for 21-37% of total greenhouse gas emissions and are a primary cause of environmental degradation, socioeconomic and health inequalities. Still, governments rarely link food systems, and in particular food consumption emissions, to their climate action targets.
The City Interest Group on Sustainable and Healthy Food Procurement has been set up to enable cities to share their experiences on the topic and work towards achieving greater results for their sustainability goals.
The Group is coordinated by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and has been formed as part of the European project COACH and SchoolFood4Change, funded by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
In a series of online meetings, the members discuss their achievements, goals and the challenges they face as they strive to procure sustainable food and catering services. More specifically, the Group aims to:
Belgium: City of Ghent
Denmark: City of Aarhus, City of Copenhagen
Estonia: City of Tallinn
Finland: City of Helsinki
Italy: City of Fano
Lithuania: City of Ladzijai
Lativa: City of Riga
Poland: City of Rybnik and City of Izabelin
Portugal: City of Torres Vedras
Slovenia: City of Medvode
This session had the following guiding question: Is sustainable public food procurement only for those that can afford it?
ICLEI also provided updates on Public Food Procurement.
See full agenda here.
This meeting centered around Small-scale farmers and SMEs participation in Public Procurement. The session included the following higlights (see the whole agenda here):
The Buy Better Food Campaign for sustainable food on the public plate, or simply Buy Better Food is the European advocacy campaign focusing on public food procurement as a key driver of food system transformation towards a sustainable, healthy, and fair food system in the European Union, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the EU Farm to Fork Strategy.
The fourth meeting focused on the StratKIT toolkit, procurement challenges and recommendations for policy makers
This third meeting continued the discussion around on sustainability criteria in conjunction with pre-procurement market dialogue/consultation.
This second meeting focused on sustainability criteria and how to decide which criteria to use it in a procurement process.
This first online meeting focused on introducing the group members and their organisations’ experience with sustainable food procurement, other than identifying common topics and issues for the group discussion in the following meetings.
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The Procura+ Sustainable School Food Procurement Interest Group has received funding from the European Union (European Regional Development Fund) under the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme 2014–2020. The content of this website and other outputs reflect the author’s/partner’s views. The EU Commission and the Managing Authority/Joint Secretariat are not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. All images are copyrighted and property of their respective owners.
