Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Waste prevention: launch of the first European guideline


by Alessandro Ferrua and Silvia Musso

The waste prevention is among the priorities for a sustainable development and it is time to take action, with the purpose to face the problem of the waste overproduction and to change old habits. How? In many Countries there are many experiences and good practices addressed to waste reuse and reduction.

Some of them are shown into the guideline for waste prevention, Quantitative benchmarks for waste prevention, published by ACR+ (Association of Cities and Regions for Recycling and sustainable Resource management), an international network of members who share the common aim of promoting the sustainable consumption of resources and management of waste through prevention at source, reuse and recycling, formed by local and regional authorities and by national networks of local authorities that represent about 1,100 municipalities.

The first European guide on waste prevention is a good tool for local and regional authorities, especially considering that by 2012 the Members States have to acknowledge the New European Directive 2008/98 that, into the waste hierarchy puts the prevention at the first place.
The book has been edited, in its Italian version, by AICA (International Association for Environmental Communication), with the support of Gruppo Hera, SMAT Torino and ERICA soc. coop.

This guide belongs to the contributions that together AICA and ACR+ want to give to improve the information exchange about the waste management.

«It isRoberto Cavallo, president of AICA, stresses – the third works translated in Italian that follows the first, about the management of WEEE and the second about organic waste. As the previous volumes also this guide, is enriched by several Italian good practices, both to better contextualized the guide’s topics, and to underline that in many case also Italy can show good examples of virtuous waste management systems».

The guide can vaunt, in its Italian version, the contributions of two famous experts: Edo Ronchi, President of SUSDEF (Sustainable Development Foundation) and Paul Connet Executive Director of AEHSP (American Environmental Health Studies Project) who wrote respectively the preface and afterword to the book.

The guide will be officially launched on Friday morning, July 2nd at the water treatment facility of SMAT in the municipality of Castiglione Torinese, few kilometers far from Turin. After the SMAT managing director’s greetings, will speak, the Environmental Assessor of Province of Turin, Roberto Ronco, the national waste management expert Mario Santi and AICA president, Roberto Cavallo.

Moreover also the businesses will have their own space thanks to the participation of Filippo Brandolini, Herambiente president and of Marco Acri of SMAT, who will speak how their companies behave towards the conference’s main topic.
Following the visit to the facility and the aperitif.

The guide will be sold during the conference at the launching cost of 25 Euros. For ones who desire to buy a copy, it will be possible to book it also in the next months. The guidelines will be printed just on demand booking them to the following e-mail address: segreteria@assaica.org. This is also a small contribution aimed to prevent the resources overconsumption and the waste production.

For the occasion it will be also possible to watch the AICA’s exhibition “Communicating Public Water”, that collects some of the best Italian campaigns to raise citizens’ awareness to the use of public water, a water that is secure, free and that doesn’t produce any waste.

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