European Week for Waste Reduction
EWWR EDITION 2011
19-27 November 2011
7.035 PROJECTS IN EUROPE (the previous year’s record has been broken! (4346 actions in 2010)
34 Organisers across 20 countries mobilising stakeholders and validating their actions
The complete outcomes of the 2011 European Week for Waste Reductions will follow shortly.
Save the date!!!
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE & EWWR AWARDS CEREMONY, 19-20 JUNE 2012, Paris
4TH EDITION OF THE EWWR: 17 - 25 NOVEMBRE 2012
With 524kg of municipal waste generated on average per person in the EU Member States (2008, Eurostat), raising awareness about waste reduction and promoting changes in production and consumption patterns is more urgent than ever.
With the support of the Information and Communication component of the LIFE+ Programme over a 3 year period (2009-2011), the European Week for Waste Reduction (EWWR) aims to promote sustainable waste reduction actions, to highlight the impact of our consumption on the environment and on climate change, and to make known the policies of the EU and Members States on the reduction of waste, including the recent revision of the Waste Framework Directive. The project will progressively extend its scope in Europe over the three editions of the Week, reaching as wide an audience as possible.
Under the coordination of the EWWR Organisers and with the support of the European Secretariat of the Week, a variety of Project developers, including administrations, associations and NGOs, businesses and industry, educational establishments, etc. got involved in the EWWR by carrying out awareness-raising actions on waste reduction, with various targeted audiences (citizens, employees, pupils, etc.). Focusing on the various stages of the product cycle, ranging from production and consumption to reuse, the aim was to inform the greatest number possible of European citizens (employees, school children, the general public…) about the simple actions that can be taken in everyday life to help contribute to waste reduction. These actions were focused on one or several of the 5 following themes: Too much waste – Better production – Better consumption – A longer life for products – Less waste thrown away.
The EWWR was initiated by a group of 5 project partners: ADEME (France, Project Coordinator), ACR+ – Association of Cities and Regions for Recycling and for sustainable Resource management (European network, Secretariat), ARC - ACR+ member (Catalonia, Spain), LIPOR-ACR+ member (Greater Porto, Portugal) and IBGE- ACR+ member (Brussels, Belgium).
Encouraging wide participation
In order to coordinate and promote the 2011 Week, 31 of the 32 Organisers across 18 countries who took part in 2010 also took part again this year. In addition 2 former Organisers (Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa) are now organized under one: the Basque country. Four completely new Organisers joined the ranks, including two new participating countries (The Netherlands and Bosnia Herzegovina). In total, there were 34 Organisers across 20 countries, mobilising stakeholders and validating their actions, which indicates an increase of about 10% compared to last year. The complete list of Organisers and actions can be found on the EWWR website.
At national level, the European Week for Waste Reduction took place in Andorra, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, the Netherlands and the Dominican Republic.
At regional and local level, the EWWR was organised in the 3 Belgian Regions (Brussels-Capital Region, Flanders, Walloon Region), as well as the Styrian region of Austria, many parts of Spain (Asturias, the Basque Country, Catalonia, Navarra, Valencia) and the UK (London, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the cities of Belfast and Warrington, and the regions of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire), along with the Sarajevo Canton (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and the Brazilian region of Minas Gerais.
Moreover, the EWWR Secretariat (enacted by ACR+) promoted the week and coordinated registrations from areas not covered by any EWWR Organiser. We have therefore in previous years received projects from countries like Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania, Norway and Switzerland.
Inspired by successful Batucamobs in 2010, this year's EWWR introduced a range of Common Actions. The aim of the actions was both to inform people about waste prevention and to measure the actual waste avoided by implementing the actions. The European spirit of the EWWR was highlighted when the same type of action took place during the Week in various regions around Europe. The actions came in 5 categories:
- Paper waste reduction
- Food waste reduction
- Repair/reuse
- Excessive packaging waste reduction
- Clean-up days
For each action a factsheet was provided by the EWWR which included guidelines on how to make the action happen. The particularity of Clean-up days is that they are global awareness raising actions, during which people are motivated to collect illegally dumped waste from nature. The area to be cleaned up could be for instance a forest, a beach, a river, a mountain, or even the streets of a town. The Clean-up day has the potential to sensitize a large audience about waste prevention.
To promote the EWWR, Organisers each received a variety of communication tools. Along with some classic tools (posters, leaflet, web banners, etc.), new tools were also developed for 2011: Factsheets on Ideas of Activities as well as on Common Actions. The tools developed in 2010 are also still available: the promotional videos in 22 languages, the Facebook page, an online game and an electronic comic strip.
7035 awareness raising actions to be implemented in 2011
According to the last count, 7035 EWWR actions were validated to take place during the 2011edition, between 19 and 27 November. The record from last year has been broken (4346 actions were implemented in 2010 and 2672 in 2009)!
One word to summarise the actions implemented in 2011: diversity. If you travelled in countries participating in the EWWR this week, you might have talked with students acting as waste prevention ambassadors, admired pieces of art (made of bottle caps, plastic bags or clothes), compared shopping trolleys (one regular and one containing less packaged products) presented at the entrance of supermarkets, visited reuse centres or exhibitions of furniture made of reused products, eaten in restaurants with tailor-made food waste reducing menus, tasted different types of water (bottled water and tap water) at water fountains, watched a giant sculpture representing an ogre made of the quantity of waste produced per person per year, or taken part in competitions and treasure hunts about waste prevention. It is impossible to list all of the actions that will happened, but all validated EWWR actions are listed on the EWWR website.
Press release in English and French.
The most outstanding European Week for Waste Reduction actions of each edition are rewarded at the European Waste Reduction Awards Ceremony.
More information:
Press section of the EWWR website
www.ewwr.eu
With the financial support of the European Commission