In the beginning of the meeting, the introduction to circular economy and the link with the circular procurement was presented. Also, the importance of the circular procurements in the overall circular economy was emphasised. The overview was given about the state plans regarding promotion of circular economy and procurement.
Joan Prummel, a represenative of Rijkswaterstaaten agency under the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management shared the Dutch experiences implementing circular economic model. He emphasized that the states play a major role as the promoters of circular economy. In addition, Estonian businesses’ representatives shared their experiences and obstacles concerning circular economy and procurements.
After the presentations there was a panel discussion about the needs and challenges for wider implementing of circular economy and design in Estonia. The panellists discussed how to improve and develop circular economy and procurements.
Due to the outbreak of corona virus, it was not possible to organise face-to-face stakeholder meeting in Estonia. Instead it was organised in the form of webinar using the Microsoft Teams platform. This allowed us to reach much wider audience than in a regular stakeholder meetings. Thus, the webinar gathered about 105 participants who were interested and eager to learn more about circular economy and circular procurements and share information about their experiences.
The participants included:
• Representatives of the Estonian Ministry of the Environment and other public authorities
• Business representatives
• Representatives of the municipalities and local authorities
• Representatives of NGOs
• Representatives of academia
• Other interested parties and individuals
This webinar showed that there is high interest in circular economy and circular procurement in Estonia. Also, this online seminar was a good chance to reach out to a wider audience and it turned out to be successful. That just shows that this topic is important to a lot of people and for that reason there is a need to continue organizing this kind of seminars.
Snapshot of the panel discussion: Top left: Harri Moora – programme director and senior expert at SEI Tallinn; top right: Kadrian Jaagund – vice-president of Estonian and Latvian Lindström; bottom left: Olavi Tammemäe – the Envrionmental Manager of Eesti Energia; top right: the webinar moderator and junior expert at SEI Tallinn - Kristiina Martin
Organiser: SEI Tallinn
Place: Online seminar on Microsoft Teams
Contact: Evelin Piirsalu, Senior Expert at SEI Tallinn, evelin.piirsalu(at)sei.org
