Webinar of the Big Buyers Project: How to Procure Recycled Asphalt?

More than 60 public procurers, technical experts and representatives of public authorities from over 15 EU Member States met in Brussels on November 9th for the first Annual Big Buyers Symposium. This closing event was the occasion to celebrate and draw conclusions on a two-year collaboration between these stakeholders, brought together by the DG GROW initiative named “Big Buyers for Climate and Environment”.

The objective of this project was to promote collaboration between public buyers across the EU in implementing strategic procurement for sustainable solutions. A bottom-up needs assessment of participants resulted in the creation of four working groups, dealing with Zero Emission Construction Sites, Heavy-Duty Electric Vehicles, Circular Construction, and Digital Solutions in the Healthcare Sector.

To promote the launch of the third edition of this initiative (the third edition will be expanded to include more working groups), DG GROW is organizing a cycle of webinars entitled ''Driving Markets through Public Procurement: the Big Buyers Project''. They focus on the achievements of the working groups and on their next steps. This webinar zoomed in on achievements of the Working Group on Circular construction. 

Sylwia Slomiak from EUROCITIES, Leon Djik from the City of Rotterdam, and Maria Reves from the City of Lisbon presented their experience in the Big Buyers Project as part of the working group on Circular Construction. The working group focused on achieving tangible results by understanding the local context and developing successful procurement strategies within the area of circular construction. They also aimed to understand the perspective of market actors, identify barriers, costs, and potential. The group's work resulted in a Joint Declaration of Intent, which was challenging due to varying situations and approaches in their organizations and countries. Here the barriers, technicalities and achievements are discussed with our distinguished speakers.