CYCLE
Good practices and indicators on waste prevention: Pre-waste partners agree to push the process forward
Nearly sixty good practices on waste prevention and the basis of a monitoring framework have been agreed on by Pre-waste partners during work sessions held in Spain, October 2010.
To tackle the increasing problem of waste generation, cities and regions must include effective prevention practices in their waste management strategies. So what practices implemented in Europe would have the most interesting potential at the local and regional level? On what basis is it possible to assess if these waste prevention actions have reached their objective and at an affordable cost? These questions were at the centre of the discussions between the partners Pre-waste, a European project which aims to help local and regional authorities to improve their waste prevention policies, during their meeting in Roquetas de Mar between 19 and 21 October.
Dematerialisation in Belgian offices, bulk sales in Italy, food waste prevention in the UK, German bans on disposable dishes, and Eco-taxes in Romania are but just a few examples of good practices for waste prevention. Last summer, the Pre-waste partners had identified more than a hundred case studies related to waste prevention, implemented all over Europe. These case studies were gathered and sorted by type of action, waste flow, and country all within a mapping report drafted by Brussels Environment (IBGE). Out of these one hundred case studies, the partners selected their favourite ones, either because of their innovative character or relevancy to their interest, or else because they seemed particularly successful. The discussions enabled around sixty good practices to be chosen as the basis of further research in order to build up a series of fact sheets of the best actions for waste prevention. The final objective is proposing these best practices to local and regional authorities to include them in their waste prevention plans, while highlighting the key parameters to optimise them.
In parallel, the Pre-waste partners also discussed possible indicators to be used for monitoring the implementation of these waste prevention initiatives and, in addition, their effectiveness. Though quite complex, the meeting provided an occasion for quite a productive exchange of ideas about the matter between the partners, showing substantial agreement on a technical report prepared by ORDIF on the subject. This report is the first step towards a framework for a waste prevention monitoring tool to be proposed to European local and regional authorities.
Other elements discussed related to the general management of the project, coordinated by Marche Region, as well as communication issues, in particular regarding events to be held in 2011 inside the partners’ countries. To support the partners in the preparation of these events, ACR+, acting as Pre-waste’s communication manager, has submitted guidelines for lowering the environmental impacts at events. One of the key events to happen next year will be a European conference on waste prevention, 28 March in Brussels, in fact happening the same day as the awards ceremony for the European Week for Waste Reduction (www.ewwr.eu).
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