Network of Zero Waste Towns Meeting

On Thursday 21^st and Friday 22^nd April 2016, Ljubljana, the 2016 European Green Capital, and first Zero Waste European Capital, played host to municipal representatives, entrepreneurs, zero waste campaigners and experts as part of the Network of Zero Waste Towns Meeting.

The conference was opened by an introduction to the history of Ljubljana and the implementation of zero waste policies in the city, from Erika Oblak of Ekologi Brez Meja. From the early struggle against the construction of an incinerator and the subsequent referendum, with overwhelming opposition in 1999 to just a few years later, having the neighboring town of Vrhnika already leading the way with recycling rates as high as 50% as early as 2003. When in 2012 another incineration plan was proposed, Ekologi Brez Meja with Zero Waste Europe’s support, successfully countered the plan with a zero waste alternative, which has led Ljubljana to being the waste management success story that it is today. This was followed by Zero Waste Europe, Director, Joan Marc Simon expressing how amazing it was that such significant progress had been made by the city in only 2 ½ years.

The first discussion panel focused on reusable nappies, featuring Elizabeta Zust, from a nursery in Vhrnika that only uses cloth nappies and Hilary Vick, from Nappy Ever After, a nappy laundry service in London. The panel also included Joan Crous from the Eta Beta/Lavanda cooperative in Bologna, Italy, where 1,100 to 1,800 nappies are washed and delivered every day. The panel covered the environmental and social benefits of reusable nappies as well as technical and commercial difficulties and issues surrounding the issue. This provided highly informative, inspirational and technical discussion by the participants. Tourism was the focus of the next panel discussion. With Nina Kosin from the Ljubljana Tourism Board opened with a focus on the significance of the Green Capital award for the city, as well as the introduction of reusable crockery at the Christmas market with a deposit scheme in place. Antonio Esposito spoke about Conka Park, the first zero waste hotel in Sorrento, Italy.

With a wide range of initiatives promoting zero waste in the hotel, they have found significant success, and positive reactions from the hotel guests.The afternoon of the first day covered the topic of food waste. Involving food waste entrepreneur Joris Depouillon from the Food Waste Entrepreneur Network, Laura Chatel, from Zero Waste France, and Albin Keuc, from Food Waste Reduction a Slovenian initiative which has provided 16 DIY tools for food waste reduction. The participants emphasised the importance of differentiating between ‘food waste’ and ‘food surplus’ with the larger portion remaining fit for human consumption, the highest level of the ‘food waste hierarchy’.The second day was opened by Zero Waste Europe’s President, from Capannori, Italy – Rossano Ercolini. Before hearing speeches from Zoran Janković, the Mayor of Ljubljana, and Irena Majcen, the Slovenian Minister for the Environment and Spatial Planning, offering their insights on Ljubljana’s success as a environmental leader across Europe.

Discover more about the conference: here!

ORGANIZERS

Ekologi brez meja (Ecologists without Borders)

Ekologi brez meja (Ecologists without Borders) is an NGO which grew from two ‘Let’s Cleanup Slovenia’ campaigns that are still considered the largest volunteers events in the history of the nation. We managed to connect 289.000 (or 14% of population) of individuals, businesses, NGOs, institutions and even President’s office, who later decorated us with the order of merit. After 2012, we decided to focus on dealing with waste at its source.We coordinate the Zero Waste Slovenija programme, which is a part of Zero Waste Europe network. With our help, six Slovenian municipalities – among them also Ljubljana – set their zero waste goals. With Zadruga Dobrote as a partner, we set up Tekstilnica: separate collection and regular monthly exchanges of textiles and second hand clothes. The project contributed to generation of seven new green jobs. With the project Volk sit, koza cela, we draw the attention to food waste problems in Slovenia. Project Zdrave ritke aims at breaking the myths about the use of cloth nappies. We are a part of the global Let’s do it! movement of 112 countries and we helped start Let’s do it Mediterranean.Our mission is activation, motivation and cooperation of individuals, communities, policy makers, industry, businesses and researchers in the area of an efficient use of natural resources with the aim to reduce costs, preserve energy and create new green jobs.

Zero Waste Europe

Zero Waste Europe was created to empower communities to rethink their relationship with resources. In a growing number of regions, local groups of individuals, businesses and city officials have taken significant steps towards eliminating waste in our society. Zero Waste Europe engages these groups at two levels: supporting local groups with independent knowledge and streamlined tools to drive change more efficiently, structuring the movement internationally to better represent the interests of our communities at the EU level and engage policymakers with a unified voice. We are both a knowledge network and an advocacy group, representing active communities in countries across the EU. We want to redesign our society so that all superfluous waste is eliminated and everything that is produced can be reused, repaired, composted or recycled back into the system. Anything that can’t be repaired, composted or recycled should be re-designed and replaced or banned from entering the market.