The third International Learning Event of the CAPonLITTER project has been organized online on the 15th of October 2020 by the Croatian project partner Istrian Regional Energy Agency ltd. (IRENA). Stakeholders from the different partners countries were invited to share their experience on the use of economic instruments to prevent littering and redundant waste generation .
The PP7 NGO MerTerre invited the ‘South Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Region’, the territorial authority of the South East of France, to share its work on this specific ILE topic.
The South Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Region oversees the regional planning of waste prevention and management. In this context, and taking into account the alarming state of pollution of the Mediterranean Sea, it has launched an ambitious and proactive "Zero plastic waste in landfills by 2030/ No more plastic in Nature by 2030" policy. With these policies, the Southern Region wants to become the first "zero plastic/plastic-free" region in France.
This program includes (1) an economic component to promote strategic sectors and (2) an environmental component to fight pollution of natural and aquatic environments. The “zero plastics program” is one of the flagship policies of the Regional Climate Plan "One COP ahead".
Located between the Mediterranean sea and the Alpes mountains, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region has got a particularly rich biodiversity, offering its inhabitants and tourists an exceptional variety of landscapes, rivers, and sea ecosystems. Because of this Region attractivity, the preservation of its environment is a real challenge. The most visited areas can suffer from chronic or occasional pollution, gradually degrading their heritage value, but can also be permanently damaged by accidental pollution.
In order to preserve the richness and the biodiversity of its territory, the Region Sud has thus launched several measures within the environmental section of the "Zero plastic waste in storage by 2030" program. The main target being to accompany the change of behavior and to implement structuring projects. The Region wishes to involve all its stakeholders in an ambitious and virtuous territorial dynamic, integrating local authorities, companies and associations working on its territory.
Three of their main actions are :
- The "Zero Plastic" commitment charter
Created by the Region Sud and implemented by the Regional Agency for Biodiversity and the Environment (ARBE), the aim of this charter is to engage, from the mountains to the sea, local authorities and organizations, companies, schools and NGOs in concrete actions to reduce plastic waste ending-up in natural environments and in storage.
- The "ReMed" Zero Plastic network, the first regional web platform of wild waste collectors
Supported by the Southern Region and animated by the NGO MerTerre, the ReMed network aims to federate all the actors involved in the preservation of natural environments and to share good practices, methodological and pedagogical tools and to centralize scientific-datas.
- The Call for Projects ‘All Together for a plastic-free Nature"
Since 2017, this regional call for projects is intended to support multi-partner actions to protect watersheds, large-scale clean-up operations, but also to encourage innovation and behavioral change. More than sixty projects have been carried out in four years.
