IMPEL’s “Landfill & Circular Economy” project and the “Make It Work” initiative joined forces in Treviso, Italy, on April 19th and 20th. The meeting was kindly hosted by ARPA Veneto headquarters. The Make it Work Project, set up by The Netherlands, the UK, Sweden and Czech Republic, aims to identify concrete opportunities improving the quality of EU environmental law and enabling eco-innovations under EU environmental legislation. The IMPEL “Landfill and Circular Economy” project focuses on verification and inspection systems that are in place in Member States, to check compliance with the criteria of the Landfill Directive in relation to end-of-waste (EoW) and by-products. The Landfill project involves 54 technicians from environmental institutions belonging to 25 EU countries and is coordinated by ARPA Sardinia (Italy).
During the meeting a visit was performed to the waste treatment plant of Contarina; particular attention was paid to the innovative diapers recycling plant, identified as a case study of Ecoinnovation and waste recovery and for an experimental procedure to assess new EoW criteria. For the three-year period 2018-2020, the project intends to draw up an in-depth report on the critical issues related to the authorisation processes and the inspection system in the field of End of Waste and by-products, fundamental factors for the functioning of the circular economy. And to propose a common procedure for uniform permits and check lists for inspector all around Europe. Another goal is the drafting of a waste training programme to be developed after a training needs assessment.
The meeting was attended by over 30 experts in the topic of End of Waste, from Ministries and environmental institutions of different European countries (Italy, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Spain, Poland, Croatia, Portugal, Slovenia, Hungary, Iceland , England, Finland, Czech Republic, Portugal), who presented the different approaches in the implementation of the principles of the Waste Framework Directive in terms of End of Waste. The discussion went on in a break out session, from which barriers and opportunities for a more effective promotion of the circular economy through the recovery of waste, emerged.
Jorge Diaz del Castillo from the DG Environment of EU Commission, and Luca Marchesi vice-president of the national network of regional italian EPA’s, also took part in the meeting, confirming the wide interest of the topic the project is tackling.
During the previous years, the project examined the issue of landfill inspections and waste pre-treatment, developed an Operational Guideline for landfill inspections, a report on the pre-treatment of waste before disposal in landfill and carried out training activities through joint inspections at landfill facilities.
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