This week is European Waste Reduction Week 2012, running from the 17th November through to the 25th November. The week is designed to raise awareness on waste reduction strategies across Europe and encourage behavioural changes on consumption and production in every day life. Here in the UK local authorities will be running awareness campaigns based on various themes in order to promote waste reduction, reuse initiatives and to ultimately throw less waste away. Individuals are also encouraged to get involved and promote awareness on their chosen waste reduction initiatives.
Now in it’s fourth year, the European Waste Recycling week has been a great success. In order to come up with your reduction actions you can take inspiration from previous years. Each year recycling initiatives. are encourages to enter the annual European Awards Ceremony, with the winners and short listed finalists detailed on the EWRW website. For example last year the winner of the Business/Industry category were Belfast University Elms Village with their Green Week. Elms Village is a residential village housing 1800 university students and the scheme was created in order to reduce their carbon footprint. Several activities were organised during the week including a vegetable garden where produce was grown and given away, book swapping between students, a book encouraging less waste from smart shopping and laundry swap for clothing reuse. These schemes highlight how waste can be reduced from simple steps leading to prolonged behavioural changes.
To find out more on what initiatives are being run during the week please see the European Waste Reduction Week website. It is never too late to introduce a recycling and waste reduction scheme and you may be a winner at the next awards so get your thinking caps on and join in.