ewwr.eu

The European character of the Week is reinforced by introducing Common Actions across Europe in 2011. Similar actions will be happening simultaneously in various European territories during the Week.

What are the common actions? Common Actions are actions that are implemented during the EWWR in different places in Europe using the same methods and sharing the objective of highlighting their real impact on waste reduction. There are five categories of Common Actions, focusing on various symbolic issues:

1. Paper waste reduction (Day without paper, Stop unwanted adverts in buildings)
2. Food waste reduction (Less Waste in canteens)
3. Repair/reuse (Waste Watchers, Repairing workshop)
4. Excessive packaging waste reduction (Wastefree meeting)
5. The Clean-up Day (to show how much waste is thrown away)

Factsheets on all Common Actions have been prepared and are now available on the common actions web page. They include practical guidelines for each action: the objectives, the time-line of implementation, a list of required material as well as the process and the quantification method for waste avoided.

Starting an awareness raising action on waste prevention is easier than ever. Through the EWWR database you can access all the actions registered since the first EWWR edition and get inspired.

The database can be searched by theme, area, type of audience and many more categories. This makes it easy for users around Europe to find out what is going on in their area. If the action has been nominated or rewarded by a EWWR award, you can also access the full description of the action. The search-function is available in all 6 languages of our website, whereas the content of the actions is in English. Still it is possible to make an automatic translation of the action, once you have accessed it.

Explore our new database through here. You can also access it through our homepage.

Don’t forget to take a look at Ideas for activities and Case studies. They can give you more ideas on where to start to plan your action.

30-03-2011: The awards ceremony for the 2010 European Week for Waste Reduction took place last Monday March 28, 2011 in Brussels before roughly 200 attendees, including the Brussels-Capital Region Minister for the Environment Evelyne Huytebroeck and several representatives of the European Commission and the LIFE+ Programme.

From 20 – 28 November 2010, 4,346 EWWR actions took place in 24 countries throughout Europe and beyond with the common aim to promote waste reduction. Out of these, 90 were pre-selected by the various organisers and submitted to an independent jury made up of European waste management specialists.

Six awards were handed out to the most outstanding actions: one for each of the five Project Developer categories plus the Jury’s Favourite Award. They were handed out by Mr. William Neale, member of the Cabinet of the EU Commissioner for the Environment Mr. Janez Potočnik. Mr Potočnik had planned to attend, but was prevented from attending the ceremony by other commitments. He expressed his support to the EWWR through a video message that was shown at the end of the Ceremony.

And the winners are:

• Administration & public authority: Better than new: 100% old campaign - Environmental Authority of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (Catalonia, Spain) - A broad waste prevention campaign carried out across the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, which promotes various strategies, including repair and reuse, responsible consumption, preference for tap water and composting.
• Association & NGO: Responsible purchase - Ecoscience Provence (France) - A campaign implemented in collaboration with several supermarkets to encourage consumers to reduce waste by purchasing products with less packaging.
• Business & industry: Reduction of glass packaging in the wine sector - Codorniu Group (Catalonia, Spain) - A project that proved it is possible to reduce the weight of the glass in cava (sparkling wine) bottles by 11%, thus reducing the amount of waste and CO2 emissions, without negative impact on sales.
• Educational establishment: Food Waste Reduction Challenge - St Mary’s Episcopal Primary School (Scotland, UK) - A project to reduce the amount of food and packaging wasted from lunches served from the school canteen and packed lunches that the children bring from home by collecting and weighing waste at the end of every lunchtime.
• Other: Malta Reuse Map - Elisa Andretti (with the support of the University of Malta) (Malta) - A project to create a sustainable market for reclaimed building materials in Malta, and to provide an instrument which could promote the creativity of people through the use of dismissed materials while raising awareness about the use of our limited resource and how this can also reduce waste.
• The Jury’s favourite: Waste Watchers - AERESS (Spain), in collaboration with RREUSE (European Coordination) - The Spanish branch of a pan-European initiative, which consists in collecting old items no longer wanted by their owners and reselling them in reuse centres that weigh and communicate the amount of items they sell, i.e. the amount of waste avoided.

Congratulations to the winners and to all the 2010 EWWR participants for making waste reduction a reality!

You can watch a video illustrating the EWWR actions carried out in Europe and beyond in 2010. More information about nominees, finalists and winners will soon be published on the case studies and good practices page. You can also download a full press file in the press area.

17-01-2011: The second edition of the EWWR Awards ceremony will take place on the 28th of March at the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel in Brussels in order to reward the most outstanding actions carried out during the 2010 EWWR. To attend the ceremony, please contact pna@ibgebim.be. On the same day, the European Conference on Waste Prevention will be held in the framework of the Pre-waste project (http://www.acrplus.org/pre-waste). More information and registration at smn@ibgebim.be.

25-11-2010: With more than 4000 actions occurring in 24 countries, the EWWR 2010 edition is already a success!

Keep in mind that the Week is going on until Sunday 28th November… An event might happen nearby in the next 3 days! So have a look at the “List of EWWR 2010 actions” gathering information on events implemented by Project Developers under each region / country on following webpage:

List of Organisers and actions - 2010 Edition

If you want more general info, maps, data and statistics on this year’s edition, consult the Press File on the Press area section of this website:

Press Area - 2nd edition of the European Week for Waste Reduction (20-28/11/2010)

Last but not least, check out the pictures & videos of BatucaMobs available on EWWR Secretariat’s Facebook page. You took part in a BatucaMob yourself? You missed it and want to see what it looks like? Just watch and hear how much noise have been made against Waste this year!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/European-Week-for-Waste-Reduction/155981097753616

08-10-2010: On the first day of the 2010 EWWR, a special event will be implemented at the same time (11:00 a.m.) in several places around Europe: a “BatucaMob”.

You want to go into waste prevention? You like music and thumping empty waste bins, trash cans and other containers? If so, contact the Organiser in your area and implement or join a BatucaMob!
And remember, the emptier the bin, the louder it sounds!

More info at the BatucaMob page on the EWWR website

22-09-2010: Watch the EWWR 2010 teaser in ewwr.eu video section:
http://www.ewwr.eu/videos-2010

Available in the 22 European languages, this 55 seconds video is a new communication tool that provides an audio-visual aid to EWWR’s tagline: “Together, take action, reduce waste”.

Don’t hesitate to have a look at it, share it and spread it to your acquaintances!

30-07-2010: The European Training Course on Waste Reduction took place on June 2010 in Porto.
More than 150 representatives of Organisers and Project Developers were involved in this 2-days event.

It was a very successful initiative!
Many EWWR stakeholders from all over Europe gathered around good practices dissemination and the preparation of the EWWR 2010 edition!

More information on the Training course webpage.

22-03-2010: Are you a European public authority with competence in the field of waste prevention interested in organising the EWWR 2010 from 20th to 28th November 2010? Let us know by sending the form of the call for interest to the EWWR Secretariat by 31st May 2010. More information.

18-03-2010: The Awards ceremony for the European Week for Waste Reduction 2009 took place on 15th March in Brussels in front of several personalities and numerous participants from all across Europe. The ceremony rewarded the most exemplary actions for their awareness raising actions on waste reduction. Click here for more details in press area

Among the 2,672 actions implemented in 14 European countries, 62 were preselected by the Organisers and appraised by an European jury composed of personalities representing the 5 categories of Project Developers (Administration/public authority, Association/NGO, Business/industry, Educational establishment, Other).

Following actions were awarded:

-    “Administration & public authority” Category: « Let’s do it with Ferda », (Estonia), is an action aimed at educating school children between 5 – 15 years old on waste reduction.
-    “Association & NGO” Category: “Enrenou de Roba”, Catalonia (Spain), consisted of a 10 hours marathon in which 34 designers let their imagination run wild in order to create new outfits from 4 tons of second hand clothes.
-    “Business & industry” Category: “Eurest reduce its wastes” (Sweden), aimed at assess bio-waste quantities produced by the Eurest restaurants and raised awareness among its staff and clients on waste reduction and on concrete actions to adapt in order to reduce waste production.
-    “Educational establishment” Category: “You Make the Difference” (Italy) involved school children as ambassador in arousing interest in the culture of waste prevention among citizens.
-    “Other” Category: Parish action on Waste Reduction (Portugal) brought together 310 participants in a church service around the theme of waste reduction.
-    Jury’s favourite: “Welcome to Poubellec’h” (France), put together an educational game designed to raise awareness among Crozon’s inhabitants about actions that lead to the production of less waste.

Numerous outstanding actions were implemented during the EWWR – 2009 edition. Most of them showed real originality and were undeniably worthy.