European Week for Waste Reduction
The European Week for Waste Reduction (EWWR)[1] was launched as a 3-year project supported by the LIFE+ Programme of the European Commission until July 2012.[2] It continues taking place in the following years. The 2012 edition of the EWWR took place from the 17th to the 25th of November 2012 under the patronage of Mr Janez Potočnik, European Commissioner for the Environment. It aims to organize multiple actions during a single week, across Europe, that will raise awareness about waste reduction. Each year, the most outstanding actions are rewarded during an awards ceremony in Brussels at the heart of the European institutions. Since the beginning of the project, more than 20.000 awareness raising actions on waste prevention have been implemented in the framework of the EWWR.
The five partners of this project are:
- ADEME (the French Environment and Energy Management Agency – project coordinator)
- ACR+ (the Association of Cities and Regions for Recycling and sustainable Resource management – project technical secretariat)
- ARC (the Catalan Waste Agency)
- IBGE (Brussels Environment, public administration for the environment and energy) and
- LIPOR (the Intermunicipal Waste Management Service of Greater Porto).
Purpose
- To raise awareness about waste reduction strategies and about the policies of the European Union and its Member States on this subject
- To promote sustainable waste reduction actions across Europe
- To highlight the work accomplished by various actors, through concrete examples of waste reduction
- To encourage changes in the behaviour of Europeans (consumption, production) in everyday life
Target audience
- Public authorities across Europe that have competence in the field of waste prevention that responded to a Call for Interest launched by the official partners of the project. These EWWR Organisers act as coordinators of the Week in the area covered by their authority, thereby ensuring the registration and validation of actions proposed by various Project Developers.
- Project developers interested in carrying out awareness raising actions on the subject of waste prevention during the Week, with the aim of informing the greatest possible number of citizens. These Project Developers register their proposals for EWWR actions through the national, regional or local Organiser covering their area.
- 5 categories of Project Developer:
- Administration/public authority
- Association/NGO
- Business/industry
- Educational establishment
- Other (for example : hospital, retirement home, cultural centre etc.).
- European citizens who participate in actions set up by Project Developers during the Week and learn about the kind of waste reduction habits that they can take up in everyday life.
Five themes of the EWWR
- Too much waste
- Better production
- Better consumption
- A longer life for products
- Less waste thrown away