#LIFEBIOBEST Final Event: Transforming Europe’s bio-waste future – organised as part of the #EUGreenWeek

Sylvie Grajales is a policy officer at the Environment Directorate General of the European Commission, working on waste management, notably bio-waste and sewage sludge, after different roles on other topics e.g. chemicals policy, in other Commission services. An environmental engineer by background, she started her professional life in health and environmental management at Procter & Gamble after graduating from the Ecole Centrale de Lyon and the Imperial College of London.

Andrea Favalessa is the Deputy General Director of Contarina S.p.A., where he is in charge, together with the General Director and the Board, of defining corporate strategies, with a focus on facility development, waste collection logistics, and technological innovation. Since 2022, he has overseen the development of the Organic Waste treatment overhaul with the addition of the Gas production facility. Since 2024, he has also been responsible for the Research and Development department.

Passionate about sustainability, technology, and the future – “My best project is the next one” – he has built a strong international career across the automotive, energy, infrastructure, and environmental sectors. He has held executive roles at Blunenergy Group and Autostrade per l’Italia, and technical positions at Jaguar Land Rover (UK) and Saipem.

He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering, studied at the University of California, Irvine, and earned an MBA from SDA Bocconi School of Management.

Francesc Giró i Fontanals, graduated in Agricultural Engineering, is currently the Director of Strategic Planning of the Waste Agency of Catalonia; all his professional career has been developed, as a technical expert and researcher in separate collection of biowaste and on biological treatment, between ESAB- Polytechnic University of Catalonia, as a researcher and teacher (1987-1993), and the Waste Agency of Catalonia, as a technician (1993-2011), deputy director (2011-2016) and Director of Strategic Planning (2016 up to now). He is also founder and member of the European Compost Network. For more than 30 years, he has been working with high commitment to develop and promote the implementation of bio-waste separate collection and recycling. Over the last few years, he has coordinated the elaboration of the “Waste & Resources Prevention and Management Programme PRECAT20” and the Law on the prevention and management of waste and the efficient use of resources of Catalonia (in the period 2018-2022).

Almut Reichel is a senior expert on circular economy and waste at the European Environment Agency (EEA), located in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the EEA, she has for example developed multiple European and country level assessments on municipal waste, packaging waste and bio-waste, as well as on circular economy, including on the links between circular economy and climate change. Almut leads the EEA’s work on the ‘early warning’ mechanism related to certain waste targets. Moreover, she is managing the EEA’s cooperation with the EEA’s country network on circular economy. Almut is an environmental engineer by training. Before joining the EEA, she has worked on waste management in the private sector in Germany, on best available technologies in the German Environment Agency, and on assessing waste policies in Germany at the secretariat of the German Advisory Council on the Environment. 

Mike Stinavage is a researcher specialised in organic waste management, circular economy, and federalism – with experience in US and EU environmental public programs and outreach. His main interests include waste prevention and revaluation, public communications, and municipal governance. He is currently involved in the LIFE BIOBEST project.

Gemma Nohales Duarte is a European Waste Management and Prevention and Circular Economy expert with over 20 years of experience. Her main areas of expertise are prevention, PxR and waste management strategies, bio-waste and textile waste management, individualised collection models and identification systems, design and monitoring of collection systems, simulation models, indicators and environmental analysis, consultancy for the administration, grant and European project management. She has experience in communication, fair fees, and personal data protection applied to waste management and the field of public administration.

She has worked for the Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona-BCNecología for 16 years and for the Waste Agency of Catalonia for 4 years. Since 2023, she has been working as a consultant for ENT Foundation, where she has been coordinating the LIFE BIOBEST project on bio-waste policies and management within the EU framework. She has participated in seminars and conferences as a speaker and has coordinated training activities in collaboration with the Environmentalist College of Catalonia.

Enzo Favoino, Chair of the Scientific Committee, is a technical expert and researcher in the Scuola Agraria del Parco di Monza, with decades of experience in separate collection, recycling, composting and prevention. Favoino is also an expert in EU waste legislation and a valuable resource in European policy-making. He is one of the founders of the European Compost Network and coordinator of the Scientific Committee of the Zero Waste Research Centre in Italy. In recent years, he has been particularly involved in defining policies and strategies as well as implementing practices to trim the overflow of plastics, with specific regard to single-use ones, and reduce their leakage into the environment. He contributed to documents and papers issued by relevant global networks working on the issue, he took part in the expert panel that carried out the research “Breaking the Plastic Wave” to define strategies (and their potential contribution) to minimise leakage of plastics.

Steffen Walk (MSc) is a scientific officer at ECN. He is an experienced scientist who has spent many years working in the field of bioresources and circular economy. He has been involved in several EU-financed projects in which he has developed a broad knowledge of bio-waste management. His experiences include waste management system analysis, concept development for new collection systems, and implementation in case studies. He has co-authored several scientific publications and technical reports and is currently in the process of completing his PhD at the Hamburg University of Technology, where he was a member of the Bioresource Management Group.

Michele Giavini is an expert in sustainable waste management, running the Italian consultancy ARS ambiente since 2001. He also works as a freelance consultant supporting the Italian Composting and Biogas Association (CIC) and municipalities willing to introduce source separation of biowaste in Italy and worldwide.

He focuses on data processing and evaluation on indicators, and is actively engaged in many EU funded projects such as H2020, LIFE, ENI CBC MED. He recently created and promoted the new concept of KAYT – Know As You Throw – which targets nudging mechanisms to improve citizen’s behaviour in separate collection.

Marco has 27 years of experience in planning consistent MSW management, designing and upgrading of collection and transport schemes, assessing recycling facilities (focus on composting), and working in working groups or projects in countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia. He supported the City of Milan (Italy) in setting up the recycling scheme for food waste in 2012 and defined the strategy for organic waste diversion and recycling for the Mega-City of Sao Paulo (Brazil). In the past years, he supported other cities such as Paris, Madrid and, more recently, Bratislava and Prague in setting up their strategies and schemes to divert organics from disposal to recycling. Currently, he works as a senior expert at the Italian Composting and Biogas Association (C.I.C.), which unites public and private companies, local authorities and others involved in compost production. Since 2017, he has taken over responsibility for the association’s certification scheme for compostable plastics.

Ignasi Puig Ventosa holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Ecological Economics and Environmental Management), an Economics Degree from the UNED, an Industrial Engineering Degree from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and a Master of Science in Monitoring, Modelling and Management of Environmental Change from King’s College London. Author of several books related to environmental taxation and waste management, among others, “Local environmental taxation” (2006). He has published a number of articles in technical and scientific journals specialized in environmental management (Waste Management, Waste Management and Research, Int. J. Global Environmental Issues, Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental Management, Journal of Cleaner Production, Residuos, etc.). Co-founder of ENT Environment and Management in 2002, and of ENT Foundation in 2010. He has also worked in the Spanish Parliament and at the OECD in Paris.

Jean Benoît Bel is an environmental engineer. He has worked for 9 years for the Paris Region Waste Observatory (ORDIF), where he first defined the environmental impact monitoring of regional waste management, and then developed ORDIF’s European cooperation through participation in various EU projects and the coordination of the Regions for Recycling Interreg project. He joined ACR+ in 2016 and participated in various EU-funded waste prevention and management projects, focusing on replicating results for local and regional authorities. He also conducted various studies, mostly consisting of benchmarking and cross-analysis of local waste management systems, on various fractions such as food waste and textiles. He is currently managing the co-creation approach of the Life Biobest project, as well as other EU projects and initiatives such as the CCRI.

Alberto Confalonieri (M.Sc. Biological Sciences) is an expert in bio-waste recycling. Since 1999 he has worked for the main Italian waste technology providers and then, from 2006 to 2018, as a researcher in the integrated waste management sector.

His job mainly focuses on regulatory and technical implications of composting and anaerobic digestion, biogas production and upgrading to biomethane. Since 2014, he has been a senior staff member of the Italian Composting and Biogas Association (CIC) and chair of its Technical Committee; he is chair of the Task Group on Soil Organic Matter of the European Compost Network as well and takes part in several working groups of the association. Since 2020 he has been an Expert of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), dealing with organic soil improvers.

With two master’s degrees in European Policies and Local Sustainable Development, Manon Jourdan develops and manages zero waste local and national projects for more than 4 years. She specialises in waste prevention strategies, particularly within municipal settings, and has conducted extensive research on the collaborative efforts between local authorities and civil society organisations in this domain. After several years working as a project manager for the Portuguese NGO Zero Waste Lab, she joined Zero Waste Europe as an Implementation Officer. Her current role focuses on advancing the adoption of reuse systems at the local level and promoting effective biowaste collection and recycling solutions through the BIOBEST project.