School food is an essential service provided by local governments in many countries. School food (or catering services) represents a significant share of the procurement budget of many local governments. Yet how should local government procurers decide which fish should or should not be purchased (because of over fishing)? What kind of strategy might work best for reducing leftovers (plate waste)? What is the best way to involve parents to ensure that their voices are also heard? These are the kinds of questions and discussions taking place between the cities forming part of the City Interest Group on Sustainable School Food Procurement.

The group was formed in March and has since met twice online so that its members can share their experiences (both good and not so good) on how to help improve or transform their school meal service to a service which is both good for people and our planet.

The group brings together eight cities and one school – Ghent (Belgium), Aarhus, Copenhagen (Denmark), Tallinn (Estonia), Helsinki (Finland), Ladzijai (Lithuania), Riga (Latvia), Rybnik (Poland), and Lyceum No. 126 Saint Petersburg - and is coordinated by ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability. The City Interest Group has been formed as part of the EU-funded StratKIT project, which aims to construct sustainability pathways across the Baltic Sea Region by targeting its food and catering purchases.

More information is available here.

Procura+ Participant Flanders Government developed a new Office Indoor Lighting LCC-Tool based on the original Smart-spp LCC-CO2 Tool. It can be seen as complementary to the ‘LCC-tool indoor lighting’ of the European Commission (EC). Both tools are based on the same principles and data (e.g. for CO2 information) and the development teams regularly coordinated their efforts to guarantee a common basis.

You can use the Office Indoor Lighting LCC-Tool (Government of Flanders) for more complex situations, to also consider the embedded emissions or to simulate lease situations. Broadly speaking, the Office Indoor Lighting LCC-Tool offers you the following additional options:

• Input of a complex building structure with a large quantity of different lighting devices (LCC-tool indoor lighting from the European Commission offers a maximum of five types of lighting devices)
• Covers both acquisition and lease contracts
• Enables the option to consider embedded emissions from the production and end-of life stage, if an Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) is available for all lighting devices

„We could count on a lot of interest and help while developing the tool. We would especially like to thank the Procura+ Network and the Procura+ Interest Group for their strong involvement." Els Verwimp, Flanders Government

Would you like to learn more? Join the official ‘Office Indoor Lighting LCC-Tool’ launch webinar on 1 June, 9:30 – 12:00! You can register here. Registration is possible up to two days before the event. The link to participate will be sent shortly before the webinar.

Find the tool and a user guide here.