Meeting of the Regional Centres of the Stockholm and Basel Conventions

The SCP/RAC  has participated in the annual meeting of the Regional Centres of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic pollutants, and the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. The meeting took place in Geneva from 31 October to 2 November 2016.

The meeting has as main objective to promote the enhanced coordination and collaboration among the regional centres to ensure the best use of the expertise of the regional centres to strengthen regional delivery of technical assistance.

Frederic Gallo, senior expert at SCP/RAC presented a document on the issue of the impact of plastics and its toxic components on the marine environment and the need of urgent measures to prevent plastic waste in the oceans. The Centers agreed on the importance of the issue and the need to put it in the agenda of the chemicals conventions.

Manolo Clar (photo), SCP/RAC's consultant, presented the project "Environmentally Sound Management of equipment, stocks and wastes containing or contaminated by PCBs in national electricity companies of Mediterranean countries" , a project  which SCP/RAC implemented jointly  with MEDPOL in 2012-2015 in Bosnia, Albania, Egypt and Turkey, and which achieved the capacitation of civil servants to deal with PCBS management, audits of transformers/capacitors, PCBs handling and import/export of PCBs, and the audit and final disposal of the PCBs identified.

The project identified 1500 tons of PCBs liquids and equipment in the countries participating, and achieved the disposal of 931 tones.

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