2019/07/25

Circular economy in cities: URBANREC final conference to be held in Brussels

Bulky waste is a challenging waste stream since there are about 19 million tonnes of bulky waste produced per year, 60% of it being landfilled, and we are far from a consistent approach at EU level to address this issue. Valuable products and materials are lost when they could be kept in the loop of product use and resource efficiency, in particular through reuse, repair and recycling.

After more than three years of hard work on identifying and testing solutions for bulky waste management, the URBANREC partners will present the outcomes of the project during a final conference to be held on 6 November in Brussels within the perspective of circular economy in cities. The conference will be hosted at the European Parliament and will present the results of regional pilots involving, in particular, the region of Flanders and Warsaw Municipality, as well as legal recommendations to improve bulky waste-related legislation. The event will highlight good practices related to reuse and selective collection strategies and will present the achievements made by industrial demonstrators for the valorisation of materials like plastics, textile and wood.

Moreover, on 7 November, ACR+ will animate a working group session targeting specifically local & regional authorities, to share good practices and help improve their strategies.

Three parallel sessions will take place to address how to develop and implement a step-by-step strategy about reuse, non-packaging plastics, and non-clothing textiles. Experience and good practices from the participants will be exchanged and roadmaps for implementation will be drafted. The location will be confirmed soon.

More information will soon follow on the URBANREC website, but you can already save the date in your agenda! If you have questions, please contact info@acrplus.org

URBANREC

More than 60 % of the 19 million tonnes of bulky waste produced each year are thrown away in landfills. To put an end to this problem, the URBANREC project aims to seek a solution allowing to recover bulky waste and improve logistics by implementing innovative collection and reutilisation systems and waste sorting and disassembly processes.

The consortium, led by AIMPLAS, consists of other technology centres such as Fraunhofer-ICT(Germany), CENTEXBEL (Belgium), IOS-PIB (Poland) and IYTE (Izmir) (Turkey); 16 companies and public bodies from Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Poland, Belgium and Turkey.