School Food 4 Change highlights public procurement innovations at Buygreen Forum 2025

16 Giu 2025

The Horizon Europe SchoolFood4Change (SF4C) project showcased its best practices in sustainable public procurement for school canteens during the Forum Compraverde Buygreen, held in Rome on 14–15 June. The project also presented successful implementations of the Whole School Food Approach (WSFA) in the schools of participating cities.

Fondazione Ecosistemi, a partner of SF4C and national lead for the Italian cities involved, organized the forum and invited cities such as Milan, Nuoro, Vienna, Ghent, Copenhagen, Rome, Lyon, Budapest, as well as ICLEI Europe (project lead), to explore the transformative potential of public procurement in school catering and to discuss how procurement can deliver social, economic, and environmental co-benefits for both cities and caterers.

Ph: Fondazione Ecosistemi

The project cities presented several positive examples, and the Forum served as a key opportunity to showcase the impacts of new tendering criteria on school food systems:
• Milan, with Milano Ristorazione, expanded opportunities for educational projects related to food.
• Nuoro revised the criteria of its new school catering contract to prioritize sustainability.
• Vienna extended the discussion of sustainable procurement to include public hospitals.
• Many other cities, including those engaged with the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP), launched pilot initiatives to enhance the sustainability of their food systems.

One session of the Forum was dedicated entirely to the Whole School Food Approach, where cities shared advancements in education and training. These included initiatives such as school gardening, training for cooks, teachers, and educators, webinars for families, pilot innovations in meal delivery, and farm-to-school twinning.in meal delivery, and farm-to-school twinning.

The experiences presented highlighted how a strong commitment to improving school canteens can reshape perceptions of school meals and food education. All cities expressed their intention to continue engaging children, families, educators, service providers, and chefs in building better, more inclusive school meal systems.