SPP HIGHLIGHTS

• European Green Capital of the Year 2019.
• World's first zero emission construction site was successfully established in the city centre of Oslo. The construction work was completed in 2020.
• "Zero emission technology" policy for all vehicles utilised by the municipality and for deliveries of goods and services for the municipality.
• Set requirements for sustainable production and an increased share of plant-based and seasonal products.
• Facilitate the greatest possible reuse, material recycling, recycling, reuse and sharing.
• The City of Oslo has reduced material consumption through its own procurements, and prioritised products that have components of recycled material, long life, warranty schemes, repair options, return schemes and recyclability.
• Assess the possibility of upgrading and repairing before new purchases.
• Introduced requirements for reduced use of disposable plastic products and plastic packaging in new contracts. Assess whether requirements should be set for the use of recycled plastic where this can provide good and more environmentally friendly solutions/products.

SPP TARGETS

• From 2025, only zero emission and biogas vehicles are allowed for transport of goods and services in municipal contracts. The target also applies for vehicles and machines owned by the municipality.
• Require all zero emission construction sites by 2025.
• Increase the share of organic food in the city’s procurements to 50%.
• Reduce food waste in the municipality by 50% by 2030.
• Halve the meat consumption in Oslo Municipality's canteens and institutions, by the end of 2023.
• Increase the share of fairtrade-bananas to 70%, fairtrade-coffee to 30% and fairtrade-tea to 10%, by 2022.

SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE PROCUREMENT

The City of Oslo takes active measures to promote international human rights and ensure that working conditions in the whole supply chain are at minimum in accordance with the Fundamental Human Rights, the ILO Core Conventions and relevant national labour regulations in producing countries. The city uses social criteria in all contracts where production processes imply risks of adverse impacts on international human rights and labour rights. The social criteria is included in the latest regulation adopted in 2017, known as the Oslo Model (Case study available, p. 72).

SUSTAINABLE AND CIRCULAR PROCUREMENT

Oslo is continuously improving its circular systems in order to make the most out of our resources. The City administration wishes to promote innovation and new jobs in the circular economy. The City Council adopted "Strategy for a sustainable and circular consumption in Oslo (2019-2030)" in December 2019. The strategy states that the municipality will facilitate a more sustainable consumption, where the focus will shift from buying new to taking care of the things that are already in use; share, replace, upgrade, renew and repair. The strategy also emphasizes the importance of reducing material consumption through procurement, by e.g. to promote needs assessments, and to prioritize products that have components of recycled material, long lifetimes, warranty schemes, repair options, return schemes and recyclability.

The City of Oslo has good experience with the re-use of ICT equipment through a collaboration agreement with a work training company. Equipment is made available by the municipality free of charge, and goes through a process where products suitable for reuse are upgraded if necessary, and spare parts can be selected before the remaining products are prepared for recycling. The collaboration agreement represents a triple bottom line. It contributes to the environment by keeping resources in the loop and reducing demand for new products, to the society by giving jobs to people falling outside of ordinary work life, and aims at providing functional and more affordable products to those who need them, for instance schools and youth centres. The City has also increased its focus on supporting extended use time for phones and computers by working to make repairs and internal reuse easier through routines and circular practices.

In recent years, the City has increased its focus on facilitating consumption that is more circular through central framework agreements and focus on circular economy in needs assessment. For example within furniture, where the City has made new contracts for redesign and repair of furniture, refurbishment of furniture and soon used furniture as well as sales and reuse of furniture. To increase use-lifetime within important categories, the City has developed new contracts like repair of work shoes, repair of batteries in electric bicycles and focus on repair of work wear. Through innovative procurement, the City is engaging start-ups to help support more circular thinking when different decision-makers, like users, procurers, and leaders, are making purchasing-related decisions on behalf of the city. That way we aim to connect the circular thinking in needs assessment with the development of circular options in central framework agreements.     

The City is focusing on reduced and smarter use of plastic. In the agreement for consumables, the criteria for ecolabels and the supplier’s ability to support reduced environmental impact of consumption through the contract was weighted 70%. A different example is our agreement for medical consumables, in which the City has cooperated with the supplier to reduce the environmental impact of fossil plastic use. This has led to the testing of multi-use packaging with the potential to reduce tonnes of pallet plastic used in the deliveries to the City every year. 

SOCIAL AND ETHICAL PROCUREMENT

Many of the City of Oslo’s contracts involves thousands of products manufactured all around the world. To promote human rights and ILO core conventions through Oslo’s procurements of goods, we set social selection criteria and standard contract clauses using Oslo's standard social criteria, adopted by the City Council in 2017. The selection criteria ensures that our suppliers have a management system for labour and human rights issues, and a system for traceability. The city uses social criteria in all contracts where production processes imply risks of adverse impacts on international human rights and labour rights.

At the contract management stage, we regularly follow up through reporting based on desktop research, follow-up meetings, documentation review and audits. We also regularly exchange with other public buyers and experts to address the systematic challenges in prioritized supply chains.

Based on risk, the prioritized categories on the City’s citywide framework agreements are ICT (mobiles, tablets and PC’s), food, medical equipment and textile. This means closer follow-up of contracts, collaboration with external experts and other public buyers to address systematic challenges and criteria development. The City has set additional criteria for suppliers to undertake social dialogue at the production site in textile production and requirements to reduce the risk of conflict minerals in agreements on PCs and tablets.

The city of Oslo is the "Fairtrade capital" of Norway and became the first public player in Norway to offer garments made from fairtrade-certified cotton to the health sector through the joint venture agreement for washing and renting workwear and institutional clothing.

Through our membership at Ethical Trade Norway, the City of Oslo wishes to signal a strengthened commitment to work for ethical trade through procurement. Our annual member report to Ethical Trade Norway 2019 is available at the Report Database at www.etiskhandel.no

LABOUR CRIME AND SOCIAL DUMPING

The City of Oslo continues to be at the forefront in fighting social dumping, work related crime, and ensuring decent labour conditions for workers in our domestic and global supply chains. More than 3 years have passed since the city adopted and introduced the first version of the "Oslo-model". The model is a comprehensive framework of measures and requirements to help combat social dumping, and to promote decent working conditions, using public procurement as a strategic tool. It is a continuous work to further develop and implement the model.

Regarding domestic supply chains, the model compiles more than 20 requirements, and applies in particular to high-risk industries such as construction and cleaning services.