Webinars

The series of 6 webinars are a part of the capacity building activities foreseen by the project. These online, free and open webinars serve to increase the skills of the staff from urban public authorities needed for the implementation of the URBAN-WASTE strategies. At the same time, since they are open and accessible for everyone, they also sensibilise other target groups such as general public, tourism service providers and others about the issue of inadequate waste management practices in touristic areas and provoke discussions and search for solutions. Another added value the webinars will have are synergies with other projects as they will include speakers from other like-minded projects in order to explore the possibilities of cross-referencing and joint dissemination of the projects outcomes.

The webinars will focus on audiences with specific constraints (dense touristic areas, coastal areas, insular areas, etc.). They will enhance the exploitation of the project’s outcomes on the European level since a hight number of cities and their representatives wouldn’t be able to attend project’s events. The webinars will be publicly available after having taken place.

Waste and tourism: how to set a participative approach; 30 November 2017

Over 6 months, the project’s 11 pilot cities and regions have been organising Communities of Practices in order to include all relevant local stakeholders and interest groups in identifying the key challenges and look for solutions through a community based decision making before they implement the chosen solutions. This webinar looked at these participative processes, their importance and the way forward. It explained the approach necessary to attract the local stakeholders, including residents, tourism establishments, tourism service providers and others, provide a mechanism for sharing their concerns and proposals and integrate those into the final solution and measures to be implemented. The webinar included speakers from Ambiente Italia, municipality of Copenhagen, municipal chamber of Lisbon, and ACR+.

Watch the webinar here.

Download the PPTs:

–URBAN-WASTE: Urban strategies for waste management in tourist cities, Jean-Benoit Bel, ACR+

–Community of Practices: Importance and their outcomes, Celeste Oliveira, Lisbon Municipal Chamber

–Community of Practices Florence, Lorenzo Bono, Ambiente Italia

–Waste Management in Party Areas – Investigating Litter Behaviour, Kira Thume, City of Copenhagen

–CONSUME – LESS: CONSUME LESS In Mediterranean Touristic Communities, Barbara Sarnari, Svi.Med.

Implementation of innovative waste management measures in tourism: who and why? 19 April 2018

How much are tourism service, food and accommodation providers aware of tourism’s impact on environment and waste management? What is their role in making tourism more sustainable? And how? This is the focus of this URBAN-WASTE webinar, 2nd of the series of 6. It is part of the promotion and dissemination of outcomes of the project. It is mainly related to concerted solutions that pilots cities and regions have found using a community based decision-making approach. This webinar focuses on the implementation phase: a whole range of different measures is now being put into practice through cooperation between local and regional authorities and hotels, restaurants and other tourism service providers. It gives those actors the opportunity to explain why they chose to improve their environmental performances.

Watch the webinar here.

Download the PPTs:

–Waste-App: background, key features and potential achievements, Alberto Clavijo, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

–Measures developed by the URBAN-WASTE project: Food tracker and WasteApp, Mattias Eriksson, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

-URBAN-WASTE external partners and stakeholders and their role in the implementation phase, Pedro Teixeira, Neya Hotel Lisbon (PPT available upon request due to its size).

Communicating good practices and innovative measures to appropriate target groups; 20 November 2018

Regardless how much effort is put into a certain campaign, project or a new measure, communication and marketing activities must not be neglected as they ensure that the message would reach the envisaged target group. This target group could be very well defined, making it slightly easier to find the appropriate communication channel, while in many cases the target group is much wider and more general. This often requires mobilisation and use of several different communication methods, stakeholders and channels. Some of the cities which participated in this webinar went for various methods involving celebrities and other kind of support they could get from local stakeholders. We also presented a project similar to URBAN-WASTE, but focusing on UNESCO heritage cities. INTHERWASTE is an Interreg Europe project which is looking at UNESCO heritage sites, their specificity (architecture, infrastructure, accessibility) and how to optimise waste management operations in such circumstances.

Watch the webinar here.

All presentations are available, as well, but due to their size, they can be requested by email only.

Quantifying the environmental impact of waste management practices in tourism; 12 April 2019

First of a series of two webinars aimed at assessing the environmental, economic and social impact of the URBAN-WASTE measures, the webinar titled “Quantifying the environmental impact of waste management practices in tourism” focused on the environmental side. With the support of two technical partners, BOKU University and University of Copenhagen, the webinar has examined the outcomes and impact of certain measures and their replicability potential. The findings and the approach used for assessing the environmental benefits are presented on a case by case scenario, whether in CO2 savings or other measurable and coparable units. This approach doesn’t only allow us to quantify the overall benefits of the measures but allow also external participants and audience to use the same approach to quantify the benefits of their own strategies and practices compared to their own baseline scenarios.

Watch the webinar here.

Download the PPTs:

– Quantification and assessment of environmental benefits of waste management practices in tourism, Gudrun Obersteiner, BOKU University

– Potential for replicating urban waste measures, Christian Fertner, University of Copenhagen

URBAN-WASTE and ConsumeLess Med: teaming up for sustainable tourism

For the fifth URBAN-WASTE webinar, we teamed up with the ConsumeLess Med project, as a synergy devoted to boost sustainable tourism and exploring the afterlife possibilities of European project and their reproducibility potential. ConsumeLess Med involved public and private bodies as partners, working together for the development of innovative strategies to preserve Mediterranean coastal areas from unsustainable tourism. Their mission is reduction: of energy, of water use, of waste.

Through the webinar, the audience had the chance to hear good practices put in place in the cities of Ragusa (Italy) and Malaga (Spain), as well as from URBAN-WASTE pilot cities Nicosia (Cyprus) and Kavala (Greece).

Watch the webinar here.

Download the PPTs:

– Communities of Practices and how to recreate them, Michelle Perello, Consulta Europa

– The Consume-Less Model: How does it work?, Lorenzo Bono, Ambiente Italia

– Communication campaign and involvement of tourist facilities in Velez-Malaga, Sandra Marin Herbert, IONA

– Green Wall for water reuse in Ragusa, Eng. Anacleto Rizzo, IRIDRA

– How did Communities of practices work in Nicosia and what were the outcomes, Maria Thiseos, Nicosia Municipality

URBAN-WASTE: Guidelines for City managers

The sixth and last webinar of the URBAN-WASTE project focuses on one of the key publications resulting form three years of studies, research, experiments, and implementation of the eco-innovative strategies put in place by the 11 pilot cities and regions. The Guidelines for City managers is a ‘guide’ that serves as a valuable tool not only for urban managers, but for policy-makers in general. Their readability and clarity allow the reader to fully understand the URBAN-WASTE methodology and, potentially, to apply and replicate it.
Following a comprehensive presentation of the Guidelines for City managers, with the support of Aarhus University, the webinar includes a presentation focusing on the social and economic impact of the measures implemented by the 11 pilot cities and regions, using a wide range of quantitative and qualitative indicators.

Watch the webinar here.

Download the PPTs:

– Introduction to the Guidelines for City managers, Erneszt Kovacs, ACR+

– What do the Guidelines contain?, Jean-Benoit Bel, ACR+

– Social and economic impact assessment of URBAN-WASTE pilot measures, Trine Bjørn Olsen, Aarhus University

Webinar series on gender mainstreaming in waste management

A series of webinars, 3 of them, were organised in spring 2018, as the project’s focus on gender in waste management. This series had multiple goals and objectives targeting both project partners, including the pilot cities and external audience in order to diversify examples, experiences and challenges. While the pilot cities were mainly benefiting from support and guidance on gender mainstreaming during the implementation of eco-innovative waste management strategies, the external guests and speakers were enjoying the opportunities of mutual learning where they were sharing their achievements and milestones, yet learning from the outcomes of the URBAN-WASTE project.

Gender Sensitive Communication; 27 February 2018

While the pilot cities organised a series of focus groups and interviews to investigate aspects of gender mainstreaming in waste prevention and management practices and policies throughout the first year of the project, the project has reached the time to implement and monitor gender mainstreaming into measure and strategies. Text, visuals and other ways of communicating are conditioned by the societies we live in, and in turn help to shape our ways of thinking and acting. URBAN-WASTE, as an EU funded project, has a responsibility to advance gender equality both as a key human rights European commitment, and to improve the projects’ effectiveness. It is, therefore, important that we pay attention to the ways in which we communicate: in writing, in pictures, in social media, in who we invite to speak/participate and how we engage and listen to these participants.

Watch the webinar here.

Download the PPTs:

–Gender Sensitive Communication, Susan Buckingham, URBAN-WASTE gender auditor

Gender Responsive Budgeting; 09 April 2018

Gender responsive budgeting is a tool to ensure that gender equality commitments are reflected and realised in public budgets. Since the 1990s, gender budgeting is increasingly used in developed and developing countries by different actors (ministries of finance, line ministries, NGOs, gender advocates and universities) to assess impact of government expenditures on citizens, women and men, and to transform budget programmes to target priority needs and close gender gaps. This webinar introduces participants to the concept, principles, tools and practical examples of gender responsive budgeting (GRB) and how to use it. Starting with basics of budgeting and public budgets we will discuss how best to combine gender knowledge with knowledge of public finance to achieve de-facto gender equality and effective use of budget funds. This is in particular relevant with waste-management measures and action being implemented at the local level. We will discuss the issues- how to understand how local level budgets are being made- and how to ensure that gender issues are being addressed thought. Participants will engage in several practical exercises to think critically about how they can use GRB effectively in context of local level waste-management strategies.

Watch the webinar here.

– Gender responsive budgeting, Maja Bosnić, GRB expert

Additional material:
– Andalusia Gender Impact Assessment Report on the 2018 Budget, UN Woman, 2018; + video
– Gender Budgeting: Fiscal Context and Current Outcomes, IMF, 2016

Gender Reporting; 17 May 2018

UrbanWaste needs to report on how the project has taken gender into account, and what differences this may have produced. The project report, a final presentation in Brussels, and an article on gender mainstreaming innovative waste minimisation in tourist areas, will be used to disseminate what has worked, what the obstacles have been, and what we have learned, collectively, through the project. The aim of all this is to promote effective waste management in tourist areas.

Good, gender-disaggregated, data collection is at the heart of effective evaluation, and this enables organisations to develop their gender equality strategies. Attention to gender equality is also a key component of creating the most effective waste reduction strategies. In addition, one of the most powerful ways of inspiring colleagues within and beyond the pilot cities is to collect narratives about what has worked.

Watch the webinar here.

– Gender reporting, Susan Buckingham, Gender Auditor