Over the recent years, a number of EU funded projects were carried out in relation to waste and environmental crime. This information is currently scattered over the web. By the development of the WasteForce Clearing House, existing resources and information from previous EU funded projects and international initiatives on waste are made easier accessible and searchable.
The Clearing House is used as a hub to collate, develop, analyse and disseminate the information that informs and assists with targeted intervention, prevention, disruption, enforcement etc. IMPEL is hosting the Clearing House as part of the WasteForce project; in this way the tool remains available and running after the project has ended. This kind of activity also falls under IMPEL’s long term ambitions as described in their Position Paper; especially in relation to the developing and building capacity of environmental regulators and establish a European knowledge and innovation centre for practitioners.
“Many relevant materials have been developed over the last years on tackling waste crime. We recognised the challenge that projects face after they have come to a close and their outcomes get overlooked. Rather than re-inventing the wheel and keeping developing new things, the Clearing House provides an overview of already existing deliverables and products for continued use,” says Nancy Isarin, IMPEL Project Manager.
IMPEL has been successfully running EU-coordinated enforcement actions and capacity building in the field of illegal waste shipments for many years. However, the results of the enforcement actions still show significant gaps in compliance with waste management and waste shipments regulations, and a lack of consequent prosecutions. The ‘IMPEL-community’ of environmental inspectors, customs and police officers will directly benefit from new products and multi-disciplinary training proposed by the project.
WasteForce is the project acronym for Deterring and disrupting illegal trade and management of Waste by developing Tools for Enforcement, Forensics and Capacity Building.
The WasteForce project is funded by the European Union’s Internal Security Fund — Police (ISFP/2017/AG/ENV/821345)