Nordic Initiative for Environmental Labelling of medical Supplies (NIELS)
Medical products are essential for maintaining modern and high-quality health care systems. At the same time, they can be a threat to both the environment and our health due to hazardous content, and a high level of resource exploitation. Five Nordic public buyers have therefore joined forces to use their purchasing power to challenge the market to develop more sustainable products.
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Om anskaffelsen
According to Health Care Without Harm Europe, the global health care sector is responsible for almost 5 % of global greenhouse gas emissions and 71 % of that is primarily derived from health care product supply chains (scope 3 emissions). If the health sector were a country, it would be the fifth largest polluter on Earth. The sector has at times been exempted from environmental regulations. Through this Nordic collaboration the five Buyers want to challenge the market to develop more sustainable products. The project is in collaboration with, and partly funded by Nordic Innovation.
The aim for short term results for this project is to explore possibilities for how procurement of sustainable health care products can be made easier, through standardised labels or other types of information in dialogue with the market.
The aim for long term results is applying for national and/or EU funding in public-private partnerships to develop more sustainable products.
Process and timeline
Needs Mapping
As a result of the needs mapping the Buyers are interested in exploring how third-party environmental labelling (Type-1 ecolabels, certified by independent certifying bodies) can make an important difference in contributing to:
- more sustainable procurement practices and product choices
- make it easier for public buyers to make the right choices
- save time and resources for both suppliers and buyers, because documentation and evaluation will be easier with certified products.
Market Dialogue
The market dialogue was held in Malmö 12 October 2023.
The objectives of the market dialogue was:
- Inform the market about the Buyer's strategies to procure greener products/sustainability strategies.
- Discuss measures and challenges related to testing/developing and procuring greener products.
- To explore what solutions are available in the market and what solutions are likely to become available soon, or in a longer time perspective.
- Collect input from the market and other interested parties on how to reduce the use and spread of both environmentally and health damaging products and substances in a lifecycle perspective.
At the dialogue the Buyers received 107 questions. The Buyers where positively overwhelmed by the interest and engagement from so many. Answers to all the questions have been sent on email to all the participants. Only the questions and answers which are directly related to ecolabelling can be found under «documents». If anyone has any further questions or comments, please get in touch with the country representatives or LUP.
- Sykehusinnkjøp HF: Maiken Pollestad Sele, Maiken.Pollestad.Sele@sykehusinnkjop.no
- The Danish Regions Joint Procurement: Susanne Backer Susanne.Backer@stab.rm.dk
- The National Secretariat for Sustainable Public Procurement: Diego Cattolica Correa diego.cattolica-correa@regionstockholm.se
- Helsinki University Hospital: Suvi Ketene suvi.ketene@hus.fi
- The National University hospital of Iceland: Valur Klemensson valurk@landspitali.is
Aktuelt om anskaffelsen
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Nordic Collaboration Creating Waves in Sustainability: The Power of Big Buyers and Supplier Dialogue