The city of Ghent awarded for its toolbox to favour the purchase of fair trade goods!
The city of Ghent (Belgium) won the « Procura+ Award » for the development of a toolbox to include social and ethical criteria into public procurement procedures. This toolbox was developed for the occasion of the procedure of renewing the working clothes contract for the Flemish city and came about through a very hands-on approach by trying to include these criteria in all the steps of the public procurement procedure.
“We are thrilled that we are able through our public procurement to encourage the market to change in a sustainable way, and that we can share our experience with other purchasing authorities through our toolbox for socially sustainable workwear,” said Aline De Cokere, Public Buyer for City of Ghent.
The toolbox is the result of the close cooperation between the VVSG (Association of Flemish Municipalities) and the city of Ghent within the framework of the former PLATFORMA project and with the financial co-funding of the European Commission.
Two regions, also partners of PLATFORMA, were also represented among the finalists:
- Ihobe, the Environmental Management Agency of the Basque Government (Spain), thanks to the deployment of a green purchasing programme among the Basque public sector
- The sustainable framework contract for cleaning services of the Catalan Government
In June last year, the City of Ghent (Belgium) received the first “EU Cities for Fair and Ethical Trade Award”.
Earlier in 2018, another « VVSG town », Roeselare, received the first prize of the PLATFORMAwards‘ 1st edition for its joint birth registration programme with the municipality of Dogbo (Benin). Discover the project in video.
