The two-day event on “Municipal waste management in the circular economy” was successfully held on the 10th and 11th of December 2019 in Thessaloniki. The event organized in collaboration with the 4th public conference of the H2020 COLLECTORS project and the support of the Municipality of Thessaloniki.
On 10th of December, a site visit at the Oraiokastro SC took place in the context of the event implementation, with the presence of the Mayor of the Municipality of Oraiokastro, Mr. Pantelis Tsakiris. 25 representatives of Local Authorities of the Central Macedonia region and of LIFE RE-WEEE project visited the SC. A Thematic Forum took place during the event, focused on models of Public and Private Partnership for the development and operation of “preparing for reuse” facilities. The operation framework of the Oraiokastro SC and the first results were presented as well, followed by a demonstration of the activities that take place in the SC (receiving, sorting, visual inspection, further preparing for reuse activities).
The two-day event was completed with the conference conduction on the 11th of December 2019 hosted be the Municipality of Thessaloniki. The conference was opened by Nikolaos Zeimpekis, City Councilor in charge of waste management at the Municipality of Thessaloniki.
The overall focus of the event was how to transition from municipal waste management systems to circular economy strategies in Europe. This topic was addressed during 3 sections, discussing the current challenges and opportunities for municipal waste management, the waste management practices necessary to reach the upcoming EU recycling targets and the need to adjust current collection practices to make them more suitable for recovery through re-use and recycling as well.
The current results and good practices raised by the two projects implementation, LIFE RE-WEEE and H2020 COLLECTORS, were also presented during the event.
106 participants were in the event representing 60 different bodies, organisms, companies from Europe and Greece, related to Local Authorities, the waste management field, the academic society and social enterprises as well.