Lead Partner: International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies - Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Montpellier (CIHEAM-IAMM)

The ECOWASTE4FOOD project brings together seven local and regional authorities from seven countries throughout Europe. Its ambition is to address the crucial issue of food waste, not only to stop an unacceptable situation which causes the loss of up to 50% of the agricultural production that keeps not consumed or is consumed in a wrong way regarding health concerns, but also to demonstrate that food waste could be at source of a resource efficient and environmentally friendly economy for the territories.

Lead Partner: Sanitation Córdoba (SADECO)

Cities are places where environmental performance management is of utmost importance: in the majority of them there is a concentration of unsustainable behaviours in terms of waste management, energy efficiency or mobility. Heritage Cities share this fact with other cities but, in addition, the preservation of heritage and the management of significant amounts of waste, due to high tourist and economic activity levels, make the observance of waste-related strategies by authorities, private actors and households of specific importance.  Heritage cities share different characteristics:  Historical artistic heritage, which leads to permanent flows of tourists, remarkable economic activity and significant production of related wasteMostly ancient cities with winding city centres where ordinary waste management methods and equipment hardly workNeed to observe aesthetic criteria for interventions in urban protected spaces, waste- field interventions includedVisibility to the rest of the world Improving local and regional policies for sustainable waste management in Heritage Cities. Even though Heritage Cities have probably developed interesting solutions and policies in many fields, running waste-related services is complicated in such scenarios. In such a framework, the aim of INTHERWASTE is European Heritage Cities to exchange experiences and policies for efficient and sustainable management of municipal waste and  in order to contribute  through mutual capacity-building, policy learning and drafting action plans - to the environmental performance of waste management in EU cities.The capacity of the staff of involved authorities to design and implement policies and measures in the waste field and governance in the same field are expected to be improved, too. Solutions and policies proved feasible in INTHERWASTE are believed to be transferable to most Heritage Cities as well as to non-heritage (less-demanding contexts) cities in the EU. The visibility of Heritage Cities worldwide can help reduplicate experiences identified in many other cities.   One project, Four steps Learning and exchanging best practices and policiesIntegrating this knowledge into concrete action plansMonitoring the action plans implemented in each citySharing the solutions and policies with other European cities Watch our video to discover more about INTHERWASTE & waste management in Heritage cities

Lead Partner: Resources Recovery Regional Agency

Local, regional, and national authorities are working hard to manage in an always more sustainable way their waste and implement a comprehensive and circular approach. They consider new approaches and technologies to reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover waste. They attempt to fit these into a comprehensive and circular approach. SMART WASTE wants to improve public policy instruments supporting innovation within waste management procedures. The final result? Smarter, more effective, sustainable, and cost-efficient waste management, benefiting all territorial stakeholders. But what are the results of their actions? Are these measures having a concrete impact? Could their implementation be more effective?  The SMART WASTE project is born to answer these questions. To make a long story short, the SMART WASTE project evaluates to what extent current national, regional and local policies have promoted successful innovation in waste management. It then proposes interregional solutions to address policy weaknesses. How will partners proceed? The project aims to understand the real impact that innovative policy measures have on the effectiveness and sustainability of waste management procedures. To do so, the five regional project partners chose one policy instrument to be assessed and improved. More information about the chosen policy instruments can be found below. The first step for the regional partners is to develop a shared methodology to evaluate, in close collaboration with local stakeholders, innovation in their waste management policies. Through this policy analysis, they will identify interregional Good Practices and assess them to find solutions to address potential failures in their selected policy instruments. These good practices will be applied to partners’ regional policy contexts through concrete Action Plans aimed to address not only their policies of interest but also long-term recommendations for future policies. They will then implement their Action Plans with regional or national resources and with continued stakeholder engagement. What are the expected results? Each regional partner can expect to achieve several results. First, they can expect to have improved their policy instrument in terms of smart and innovative waste. Second, thanks to continuous engagement with their stakeholders, they can expect to have increased professional capacity among these stakeholders. Finally, they can also expect to have increased the awareness of the public about the importance of innovation in waste management and of related public policies.