More than 20 best practices on waste prevention to inspire cities and regions and feed their waste prevention plans

11 July 2012 Press releases

The Pre-waste project partners are proud to highlight 27 Pre-waste best practices that could be implemented by regional or local authorities to reduce waste from being generated and ending up in citizens garbage bins.

These best practices are presented in detailed factsheets, describing how each action was implemented and what were its results, their effectiveness being demonstrated by indicator data. The Pre-waste partners are also performing feasibility studies about some practices of particular interest for them in order to assess their transferability on their own territory. For a number of partners pilot actions will test this transfer before the end of 2012. Most of these best practices are already available on the Pre-waste website and all of them along with the feasibility studies will be available for the public before the end of 2012.

The top 27 Pre-waste practices for waste prevention are the followings:

“Love Food Hate Waste” campaign - North London, UK
No-advertisement sticker with legal backing – Brussels, Belgium
“Let's do it with Ferda” education programme for schools – Estonia
Self service for detergent – Piemonte region, Italy
R.U.S.Z - Repair and Service Center – Austria
Ecomoebel - Redesign of furniture – Germany
Promotion of decentralised composting – Brussels, Belgium
Food weighing in schools – Halmstadt, Sweden
Waste prevention communication practices – Sofia, Bulgaria
"Travelling books" – Montreuil sur mer, France
Accompanied paper waste prevention in schools – Brussels, Belgium
Alelykan reuse park – Gothenburg, Sweden
Ecolabel "Legambiente" tourism – Marche region, Italy
Calender with hints on waste prevention – Tampere, Finland
Dematerialisation in offices – Brussels, Belgium
Waste prevention campaign toward shopkeepers and artisans – Coglais, France
Food marche desk "ONLU" – Marche region, Italy
Composting at source in households, kindergartens and schools – Sofia, Bulgaria
"Using less, living more week" – Finland
Brussels waste management plan with reduction targets – Brussels, Belgium
Menu Dose Certa - Food waste reduction and certification in restaurants – Porto region, Portugal
Clothes library – Stockholm, Sweden
Environmental education programme for the unemployed and households – Malta
Ban on disposable food and drink containers at events – Munich, Germany
"Bambini leggeri" campaign for washable nappies in the nursery – Marche region, Italy
Pay as you throw scheme – Tampere, Finland

The 27 Pre-waste best practices are the result of a large scale analysis of waste prevention strategies. From an initial gathering of more than a hundred actions implemented thoughout Europe, the ten Pre-waste partners – made of European regions and cities and a European network – selected and investigated around 50 cases, the most promising ones, for which they gathered more details. From these about-50 good practices, the Pre-waste partners picked up the best initiatives, on the basis of the 5 following criteria: Targeted; Replicable; Effective; Innovative; Representative.

Pre-waste is a 3-year project (2010-2012) co-financed by the INTERREG IV C program. Its aim is to help local and regional authorities to improve their waste prevention policies. The main outputs will be 20 waste prevention best practices, a web tool allowing the assessment and monitoring of waste prevention actions and guidelines for developing efficient local and regional waste prevention policies.

The results of the project will be disseminated during the Pre-waste final conference, to be held on 7 November 2012 during ACR+’s European Waste and Resource Days, organised in cooperation with IBGE and the Committee of the Regions in Brussels.

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