Call for Expression of Interest to become an ECOPOL scale-up partner and receive funding to implement one good practice

ECOPOL invites public agencies to apply for a closer cooperation and to receive funding up to 40.000 EUR from ECOPOL to develop and pilot new eco-innovation policy instrument in their country or region.

About ECOPOL

The ECOPOL project aspires to accelerate the implementation of eco-innovation policies across Europe. The project sets out to foster transnational cooperation, development and implementation of better policies and instruments regarding green public procurement, waste management and internationalisation of eco-innovative SMEs. ECOPOL is funded by the European Commission’s, DG Environment and links to the ECOAP and its High Level Group. ECOPOL is also one of the milestones of the EC’s new Eco-Innovation Action Plan, supporting the cooperation between the EC and the Member States.

More information about the project and its results can be found on this website.

ECOPOL best eco-innovation policy practices

One of the main targets of ECOPOL is to identify promising eco-innovation policy instruments and practices. Currently, we have screened more than 120 good practices from the European countries and all over the world. They are mainly focusing on the three main topics of ECOPOL: green public procurement, innovative waste management policies, and internationalisation of SME’s. You will find the descriptions of the practices here:

• GPP: http://www.ecopol-project.eu/easydata/customers/ecopol/files/materials/gpp1.pdf
• Waste&recycling: http://www.ecopol-project.eu/easydata/customers/ecopol/files/materials/waste_final.pdf
• Internationalisation: http://www.ecopol-project.eu/easydata/customers/ecopol/files/materials/internationalisation1.pdf

Currently, the experiences from these practices – already shown to be efficient –are utilised in the pilot implementation projects that take place in the participating countries. These pilots are supported by ECOPOL with a series of tools for implementation.

ECOPOL scale-up partnerships

In order to upscale these important findings and tools at European level, ECOPOL launches a new activity: ECOPOL scale-up partnerships. With these partnerships, a number of new associated partners will be able to benefit from the work of ECOPOL and to implement new eco-innovation support instruments in their own countries or regions. With this model, ECOPOL will develop and test an innovative way for disseminating and replicating experiences and results of the EC projects between the Member States, as well as speed up the widespread implementation of good eco-innovation support measures across Europe.

Being an associated partner provides new public agencies with access to the in-depth information on the best eco-innovation policy instruments and practices, as well as to the tools developed by ECOPOL in order to support efficient implementation of the practices.

ECOPOL also provides funding for a scale-up partner to support the implementation of new practices. A maximum of 5 scale-up partner organisations will be selected. Each will be eligible to receive up to 40.000 EUR in form of subcontracting from ECOPOL. The 5 new scale-up Partners will be incorporated into the existing ECOPOL working groups on GPP, waste&recycling and internationalisation. They will also be invited to the Reflection Group. With the funding, the partners are expected to implement one new practice, identified by ECOPOL, in their own country/region with help from the existing ECOPOL partners.

How to become an ECOPOL scale-up partner?

In order to participate in the ECOPOL scale-up partnership model and to receive funding, please send an Expression of Interest letter to the ECOPOL coordinator, Mr. Tomi Tura (contact details in the end of the message), until 16^th November.

The EoI letter has to include:

• Name and contact details of the applying organisation and the responsible contact person
• Pre-selection of up to three good practices from the ECOPOL good practice database that you aim to promote inside of your political system for implementation in your country/region
• A short description of a challenge, problem or need in your country/region you want to tackle with this project
• An initial plan (up to 1 page) of how you are aiming to implement the new practice(s), as well as the intended results of the project.
• A short description of the proposed project organisation and staff.

The full length of the EoI should not exceed 2 pages.

The ECOPOL partnership will then view the EoIs and select the 5 most convincing ones based on the following criteria:

• Quality of the applicant partner organisation and staff proposed to work with ECOPOL
• Potential impact of the eco-innovation measures pre-selected
• Learning curve for the country/region.

Timeline

The scale-up partners will be selected and published by the end of November 2012. After that, ECOPOL will contact all the selected partners in order to discuss with them about the proposed plan and its schedule, and in order to start the formal scale-up partnership with ECOPOL.

The scale-up implementation pilots should be prepared in the beginning of 2013. By 30 September 2013, the pilots must be sufficiently advanced to be able to report that all administrative hurdles for their implementation are cleared and that their implementation is under way.