ZERO WASTE WORKSHOP Frioul
November 8 - 10, 2022

CONTEXT

The Mediterranean Sea is one of the most affected by marine litter, especially plastics. This problem has huge impacts on island communities and biodiversity. Islands are home to remarkable habitats and species sensitive to litter. The increasing consumption of single-use plastics, the inappropriate management of waste generated by seasonal tourism, and abandoned waste also impact the key economic sectors of Mediterranean islands, particularly fishing and tourism.

The Mediterranean benefits from numerous initiatives in waste assessment and management. More broadly, islands and Marine Protected Areas are increasingly networking towards sustainable development, sharing best practices and joining forces. This problem has huge impacts on island communities and biodiversity. Islands are home to remarkable habitats and species sensitive to litter. The increasing consumption of single-use plastics, the inappropriate management of waste generated by seasonal tourism, and abandoned waste also impact the key economic sectors of Mediterranean islands, particularly fishing and tourism.

The Mediterranean benefits from numerous initiatives in waste assessment and management. More broadly, islands and Marine Protected Areas are increasingly networking towards sustainable development, sharing best practices and joining forces.

Yet, projects and interventions are often scattered, resulting in small-scale impact, no use of harmonized approaches in terms of monitoring and mitigation, insufficient replicability of successful measures, low adoption by local managers of tools to effectively address waste, and low impact on regional policy processes, among others. The results and products of these projects are often only available at the local level, fragmented, and spatially limited to the northern part of the basin, making it impossible to draw conclusions at the basin scale.

PURPOSE OF THE EVENT

The objectives of the event are:

To have an impact on waste reduction by capitalizing on the collaborative achievements of Mediterranean island projects conducive to a circular economy, sustainable waste management and plastic prevention by :

Promoting collaboration between island projects
Transferring approaches, results and lessons learned from individual projects to other islands for capacity building, as well as supporting the creation of new island partnerships
Integrating projects and results of the programs at different scales: from the local level (with Friuli whose territorial planning strategy & SMILO labeling process will be at the heart of the exchanges) to the regional level (European programs, Barcelona Convention, BeMed).

To promote the good practices of Frioul and the participating islands, to create exchanges between the islands of the SMILO network, and beyond, in relation to waste management and prevention, but also more generally on the sustainable management of islands. This meeting aims to encourage the emergence of new partnerships between the islands and exchanges of good practices on the key issues of each island.

To learn more, you will find the link for all the presentations made during this workshop here