European Zero Waste Academy in the making
The next two years will be exciting for us – we are starting a bigger cooperation project with our friends from Zero Waste Europe and Ecologists Without Borders (Društvo Ekologi brez meja) with the grant received from EU education programme Erasmus+. Our goal is no smaller than creating a framework for European Zero Waste Academy. For that reason we are also partnering with Estonian University of Life Sciences and Tallinn University for their educational expertise. When Zero Waste Europe came out with the idea of Zero Waste Academy, which they have already started developing, it made perfect sense to join our forces and really boost it to life.
The objectives of the project are:
– To create a strong curricula for advancing the zero waste cities movement in Europe
– To kick-start a European network of zero waste trainers to implement this framework in their local communities and increase the scale and impact of our work
The main target of our project will be the municipality level. We all know that this is where the waste management really happens (or in many cases doesn’t happen). It’s where the national ambitons get stuck but also where it can be proved that zero waste works, even if the waste policy is not yet strong enough. We want to emppower the community leaders and zero waste advocates to be better at explaining what zero waste is, how to change existing waste management practices and convince decision makers that it can be financially benefitial. As the next step we also want to grow our network of experts, in both waste management and training, so we also focus on how to design workshops and training courses, where people can learn with ease.
Within the project we will be creating two training formats, one for zero waste ambassadors and the other for zero waste trainers, both supported by training materials and a certification system. What it all means in details, we are for the time keeping to ourselves and you will have to wait and see what we will be creating in next two years.
Although the project focuses on Europe, it’s waste management practices and culture, we are certain that the project results can be put into use and replicated also in other continents. The results of the project are expected to be available by spring 2022 and there will be several events organized to introduce these results to a wider audience.
We are really excited to get started with this journey, bringing together different experts and practicioners and you will hear more about it in the future for sure!
Project contact person: