The City of Oslo has, through public procurement, established the first pilot of a construction site with only zero emission machinery. To initiate market development, there a broad dialogue has been organised with stakeholders aiming at developing a market for zero emission construction vehicles and machinery. The pilot has been a success, showing zero emission construction to be possible, with relatively low additional costs.

By 2025, all construction sites commissioned by the city of Oslo are to be zero emission. The city has gained experience form demanding fossil free construction over the past years, and has adopted fossil free as a minimum requirement in all construction procurements. In 2019, the city also adopted standardized award criteria to promote zero emission machinery.

Reducing indirect emissions related to building materials is also an important focus area for the City of Oslo. Several pilots are now testing requirements for recycled as well as low carbon materials. The City Council will in short time establish a quantitative target for reducing climate gas emissions related to the use of materials.

Oslo is continuously improving its circular systems in order to make the most out of our resources. The City Council wishes to promote innovation and new jobs in the circular economy, and adopted «Strategy for a sustainable and circular consumption in Oslo (2019-2030)”. The strategy states that the municipality will facilitate a more sustainable consumption, where 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 procurements.

E.g. promote needs assessments, 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 enters a process where products suitable for reuse are upgraded if necessary, and spare parts can be selected before the remaining products is 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 of Oslo is at the forefront of circular use of available resources, like using bio waste and city sewage for biogas production and using the resource to fuel city buses and waste trucks. Waste no longer reaches an endpoint, but is a resource to exploit. The core of the waste management system is an extensive system of source separation where the citizens work together with high-tech machinery to ensure high recycling rates. All waste becomes raw material either in the production of new products such as new plastic products, bio methane, and bio fertiliser or as heat and electrical power. Food waste, garden waste and sewage become biogas, soil-products and bio-fertilisers.

The City Council has a strong focus on sustainable food, i.e. by increasing the amount of organic food, setting requirements for good animal welfare, reducing food waste, reducing meat consumption and promoting plant-based diets. The city is continuously working on how to develop its portfolio of framework agreements, as well as assortment management, to make sustainable alternatives a simple and affordable choice. In addition, the city is focusing on training and other initiatives that leads to more sustainable food consumption.

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 has 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.

Many contracts involve thousands of products manufactured all around the world. To promote human rights and ILO core conventions through Oslo’s procurements of goods, the city uses social clauses in all contracts where production processes imply risks of adverse impacts on international human rights and labour rights. The social clauses are included in the “Oslo-Model”. Suppliers must take 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 of Oslo also use social selection criteria in order to ensure that suppliers admitted to the competition are able to fulfil the social contract clauses. To be considered as a potential supplier for municipality, the companies must document the quality management and traceability system suitable to verify compliance with social clauses throughout the supply chain.

One of the challenges in our work with ethical trade is that the municipality has a decentralised procurement function. Our goal is to create a solid professional network across the agencies of the municipality by sharing best practices and advisory in order to work more efficiently and systematically.

In 2017, Oslo became a member of the Ethical Trade Norway. Ethical Trade Norway is a multi-stakeholder initiative, represented by NGOs, trade unions, businesses and the Enterprise Federation of Norway. It is a resource center and an advocate for ethical trade practices. 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
The City of Oslo is monitoring compliance with social contract clauses annually as a minimum. If the risk of violations of human rights and labour rights is high, the monitoring actions may be stepped up. We have also established framework agreements for third party auditing services in order to verify compliance with social contract clauses in supply chains. The results of the social audits are available through the City of Oslo’s Procurement Portal, enabling other participants on the framework agreement to share their experiences. The ultimate goal of monitoring is to improve standards at manufacturing facilities and contribute to promote respect for human rights and decent working conditions around the world.

The City of Oslo is a Fairtrade-city. A Steering Committee comprised of representatives from the municipality, business enterprises and NGOs is established and is taking actions to promote fair trade in the central functions of the city, including in procurement and among the citizens. One of the most important step in this area is the joint agreements in the food sector combined with category management. This has led to a significant increase in the share of fair trade-certified goods, mainly for kindergartens and health care institutions. Another significant step is a framework agreement entered in 2020, offering dry cleaning and rent of workwear to the health sector. Some products on this agreement are made from Fairtrade-certified cotton and some are made of Tencel fibres, a fabric made out of cellulose from eucalyptus trees.