Reducing Carbon Footprint Procurement, Using the Kela Maternity Box Example

Project description

The value of public procurement in Finland represents 15% of Finland’s gross domestic product. Innovative public procurement can improve the productivity, quality, sustainability and/or effectiveness of public services. By creating demand for innovative solutions, the public sector encourages companies to engage in research and development to accelerate the dissemination of new solutions and business growth. With extensive procurement of new solutions, the public sector can also help to create reference markets and promote exports. Therefore, it is important to turn this economically significant public sector activity into a driver of social and economic development towards sustainable growth. Businesses, administrative bodies and other organisations can reduce the environmental impacts of their operations, and also cut costs, by buying environmentally friendly goods and services. This also promotes the development of environmentally friendly products and increases the demand for them.

An example of public procurement is the Kela Maternity box. Each year, Kela awards around 50,000 maternity grants, of which about 30,000 are provided in the form of a maternity package. There are altogether some 50 different items in the box. The selection of companies – and products that are included in the year’s package, is followed by an open public bidding process where service providers across the fashion, health and care industries are invited to participate.

This project aims to use the Maternity package as an example to inform the legislation, the role of working methods and policy changes that can be scaled to other procurement processes across public services in Finland. The task involves identifying the main drivers and processes that should change in order to establish sustainable and innovative public procurement as the norm.

Read more about the process in the blogs!

• More than a baby box …
• Where are we now?
• From understanding to actions: identifying leverage points for potential solutions
• Clearing the skies for collaborative sustainable procurement

This project was showcased during the 2021 Final Show.

Student Proposals

Unclouded

project by Michael Buchta, Amandine Fong, Kalle Kaisko and Xinghua Meng.

Askel

project by Sara D’Angelo, Nicole Grekov, André Helgestad and Shreya Shrivastava.

Family Package

project by Loren Córdoba, Tessa Kauppinen, Joosep Laht and Junrui Li.