Circular Public Procurement and Contracting Guide

After the entry into force of the Andalusian Circular Economy Law 3/2023, and as stated in Article 11 thereof on green public procurement, the contracting bodies of public sector entities must ensure that the environmental impact of works, services and supplies that they are responsible for is reduced, promoting green public procurement as an essential instrument for driving the transition to a circular model, by including a series of environmental criteria or clauses in their procurement processes.

Aware of this, Malaga City Council is immersed in the development of a Circular Economy Strategy, which includes a strategy for circular public procurement. This involves two priority actions: the creation of a guide to help make public procurement "circular" and the development of a training programme for public employees.

To this end, during 2023, work was carried out on the creation and drafting of a Guide to Circular Public Procurement and Contracting, which was presented to more than a hundred municipal employees from different areas and municipal companies (those who have a responsibility for contracting), during a training activity to continue advancing in the promotion of the circular economy within the local administration. The preparation of this guide involved a documentary review of the strategies and benchmarks of other organisations, updated sectoral regulations and a study of the most frequent contracts entered into by Malaga City Council in order to make its application very practical.