| dc.description.abstract | Public procurements are globally recognized as key to achieving more sustainable consumption and production patterns, not only because of the potential to reduce environmental impact from public services themselves but also due to the potential to incentivise the development of new markets and solutions that can be used in the private sector as well (Alhola et al., 2019; UNEP, n.d.).
One approach to addressing more sustainable consumption and production patterns is implementing circular economy principles (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017). As the largest municipality of Norway, the City of Oslo has developed high ambitions for circular public procurement, with textiles as one of several prioritised categories due to textiles’ large environmental impact during their lifecycles.
In this thesis I therefore investigate activities connected to textile consumption in the City of Oslo’s health sector in the light of practice theory, where these activities are analysed in terms of the practice elements materials, competence and meanings (Shove et al., 2012). The purpose is to gain an understanding of whether and how these activities can be affected for a more successful implementation of circular public procurement. The investigation is carried out using a mixed-methods approach, where the qualitative strategy is prioritised as the main method. I used interviews, a quantitative data set and documents as data sources.
The findings suggest that when implementing circular economy principles, it can be useful to broaden the focus on public procurement to a greater involvement of the use-phase. With this, users of goods and services become more central actors, and their practices are therefore relevant sites for intervention, in addition to the tendering process, which already receives attention in circular public procurement guidelines and research. | |
