The Sicilian city of Syracuse, as one of the project’s pilot cities, had the pleasure to host the 9th Mutual Learning event on “Marketing Measures and Communicating Good Practices to Different Target Groups” and the accompanying Municipality Forum which gathered not only our own pilots but other exemplary cities as well as local attention.
As the summer still wasn’t over, yet still in full swing in some of our pilots – just like in Syracuse, this meeting was dedicated to the monitoring of the implementation phase and sharing challenges and achievements our pilots had. While the Municipality Forum is normally reserved for the project partners only, it attracted attention of the Sicilian government whose representative attended and witnessed what URBAN-WASTE project had brought to touristic destinations across Europe. Well, 11 of them, to be precise. The pilots were very proud to share their achievements, such as Santander and their swap market, where locals and tourists could exchange goods and their belongings they didn’t need anymore for those they were happy to have. Or Lisbon with their outreach among local restaurants and canteens.
The Mutual Learning event saw a much bigger audience, as the local institute and school for hoteliers and their students joined the event, together with external speakers Dimitra Rappou, of the North London Waste Authority, Gaetano Russo, of the Sicilian government and on behalf of AICA, Paola Pluchino of the Italian Association of Environmental Analysts and Italian environmental journalist Emanuele Bompan. The URBAN-WASTE project was represented by Rute Carvalho, of the Municipality of Lisbon who presented their good practice to the audience. The numerous external speakers were invited to share their experiences and approach to communication campaigns and new measures to a wider audience, which traverse several target groups.
After the official opening of the day, by Syracuse’s vice-mayor Mr Giovanni Randazzo, Emanuele Bompan gave a nice and inspirational introduction to the topic sharing his own observations and reflections which came from tens of years of work in environmental protection and circular economy. Paola Pluchino made a reflection at the importance and role of environmental standards in tourism and what added value they bring to sustainable tourism. After these general and introductory presentations, the three cities and regions – North London, Sicily and Lisbon started showcasing their projects and campaigns. North London Upcycling Show attracted quite some attention last year by the local community, as well as celebrities that they decided to change it to London Upcycling Show, covering entire London this year! Sicily’s campaign Sicilia Rigenera tried to tackle one of the burning issues in Sicily – waste, by setting up circular economy principles and empowering local communities. The project was quite successful as it brought them the award at last year’s European Week for Waste Reduction. Lisbon, on the other hand shared the experience they had for their campaign “Trash can wait! Extend the life of your objects” which spanned over one week in 2017 after being communicated en masse to the local community which was invited to join a massive re-use and repair campaign in several corners of the Portuguese capital.
Erneszt Kovacs, on behalf of ACR+, as a wrap up, presented the European Week for Waste Reduction, which actually featured all Lisbon, Sicily and North London as registered actions in 2017. He shared the key principles and aspects of this platform and campaign which could help even the URBAN-WASTE cities to increase their outreach and also have an eminent spot within this European-wide campaign.
The next URBAN-WASTE meeting, the biggest this year, gathering all the 27 project partners and more than 65 participants will take place in the last week of November, in Lisbon.
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