During a second thematic seminar, the WINPOL project discovered 11 new practices on innovative models for waste collection, prevention, and reuse and recycling. These will add to the database of good practices for partners to transfer on their territories and to share with other cities and regions in Europe.

Antwerp, Belgium – After a first thematic seminar in May 2019 in Maribor, Slovenia, and a study visit to Imola, Italy, in October 2019, the WINPOL partners continued to exchange experiences during a second thematic seminar and site visits in Belgium. Hosted by the city of Antwerp from 19 to 21 November 2019 the event focused on innovative models for waste collection, prevention, and reuse and recycling.

In total, 11 practices were presented, covering the three aforementioned topics: prevention, collection, and reuse and recycling. While most of the practices are implemented by the WINPOL partners or their stakeholders, three practices were brought by external experts invited by ACR+, the Advisory Partner of the project. In this way, the WINPOL project partners enlarged their pool of practices with two practices from the province of Styria in Austria: an initiative aiming to avoid single-use plastics during public events (G’scheit feiern – Party smart) and an initiative increasing reuse of items (the reuse box); and one practice from the Municipality of Apeldoorn in the Netherlands: a collection system organised in such a way as to make the separate collection of recyclable waste more convenient for citizens as compared to the collection of residual waste, giving maximum incentives to separate more and better, and to reduce the amounts of non-recyclable waste generated (reverse separate collection). All the presentations will be accessible on the WINPOL website.

The thematic seminar is part of the “Interregional Learning” phase of the European-funded project, during which project partners and their local stakeholders are working together to identify and exchange relevant good practices existing on their territories. In this regard several project partners already identified practices that they could replicate at home. For example, the model of a mobile collection centre (pop-up containers) developed by Antwerp caught the attention of the city of Maribor. Should the municipality be willing to install such containers, it will have the opportunity to learn about the practice in details as the project and the Interreg Europe programme encompass a dedicated funding for bilateral meetings.

Partners took advantage of being in Antwerp to see in practice how innovation and waste management go hand in hand. The study visit took them to Umicore Precious Metals Refining which operates as one of the world’s largest precious metals recycling facilities. The business unit visited focuses on complex waste streams containing precious and other non-ferrous metals and uses innovative technologies at each steps of the recycling process. The second study visit demonstrated that innovation does not necessarily involve highly technological solutions. De Collectie (The Collection) is an innovative project supported by the city of Antwerp and the Flemish region to promote the reuse of textiles through the collaboration of five non-profit organisations.

An additional site visit was organised on 21 November 2019 to the city of Ghent where the local council has implemented a fee system based on the volume of waste and the frequency of depositing the bag or the bin. The whole system, which follows the waste hierarchy, is implemented by IVAGO, the local waste operator, with the help of a computer controlled kerbside collection.

In May 2020 a third and last thematic seminar will be addressing the issue of innovative tarification. After that, partners will select several good practices among those presented to transfer them on their territories. For this purpose, they will elaborate action plans which will be implemented during the second phase of the project, starting in December 2020. A handbook gathering all the practices explored by the project will also be published next year, available to all.

Interested local actors in the partners’ territories can still get involved in the WINPOL project through a series of events organised by partners.

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For more information:
Bilyana Spasova
Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser. |+32 2 234 65 00
www.interregeurope.eu/winpol  

 

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