The Pre-waste project has successfully come to an end: now the tools are in the hands of cities and regions

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After three years of successful implementation, the Pre-waste project reached its objectives: to share local and regional expertise in order to create a common methodology for waste prevention strategies, identify and analyse waste prevention good practices, and develop an efficient assessment and monitoring tool for waste prevention.

These outputs were presented to waste prevention experts from all over Europe during the Pre-waste final conference, held on 7 November 2012 at the Committee of the Regions in Brussels.

There is no doubt about the usefulness of these tools for cities and regions, in particular in view of  the obligation for European Member States to adopt waste prevention programmes by the end of 2013 – national programmes that will eventually find a concrete transposition and implementation in local and regional waste prevention programmes.

The Pre-waste common methodology aims at providing cities and regions with guidelines on how to develop or improve their local or regional waste prevention strategy. The methodology encompasses five complementary steps: assessing the situation; setting priorities and objectives; involving stakeholders; shaping and implementing the plan or action; and finally, monitoring.

Out of the analysis of more than 100 cases identified throughout Europe, the Pre-waste partners have selected 27 waste prevention best practices. From food waste prevention to repair and reuse centres, from communication campaigns to economic and legal instruments - local and regional authorities will find plenty of inspiration.

In order to facilitate the assessment of the success of a waste prevention action, the Pre-waste project developed a framework of indicators and a monitoring webtool. These instruments will provide strong support to decision-makers and technical experts in the assessment of the potential of waste reduction they can reach and the follow-up of the results they achieved.

Pre-waste is a 3-year project (January 2010 to March 2013), co-financed by the INTERREG IV C program, gathering ten European partners and aiming at helping local and regional authorities to improve their waste prevention policies.

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