Participation in the SWEEP-NET Forum 2014

The SCP/RAC has participated in the 4th SWEEP-NET Regional Forum in Amman, from the 13th to the 15th of May 2014. The Sweep-Net is a Regional Solid Waste Initiative on exchange of information and expertise in the Maghreb and Mashreq countries.

The forum gathers participants from public and private sector, NGOs, donors, academics, research institutes, etc in order to exchange experiences and perspectives.

Mr. Frederic Gallo, on behalf of the Waste Agency of Catalonia, institution that hosts the SCP/RAC in Barcelona, imparted a preentation about "Extended Producer Responsability: the catalan experience in Packaging and Packaging waste". Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging and other waste streams is becoming increasingly interesting for middle income countries. They are seen by public authorities as a way to reduce plastic packaging, to organize resource recovery and recycling more effectively and to share the costs of managing the system with the waste producers, the packaging producers. This can sgnificantly reduce littering and spreading of plastic packaging in the environment and specially in the Mediterranean sea, which is an imnportant goal of all the Mediterranean Countries. The regional Plan on Marine Litter, approved on December 2013 in Turkey by the parties of the Barcelona Convention for the protection of the Mediterranean sea against pollution, is a prove of that.

Mr. Gallo presented the experience of the EPR of light packaging during the last 18 years in Catalonia, which has led to very positive results, altough still insufficient, with regard to the collection and management of light packaging. The presentation can be downloaded here.

After the presentation there was an interesting exchange of points of view with different representatives of the civil society.