The vision and mission of the Zero Waste Cities programme is to accelerate the transition towards zero waste at the local level, through the implementation of ambitious and effective local waste prevention strategies. To achieve this, it is critical that our local groups and activists are equipped with the right knowledge, tools and experience to support municipalities on their journey to zero waste.

This is why we are involved in an exciting Erasmus+ project, ‘Building a European Zero Waste Academy.’ Together with our Slovenian member Ecologists Without Borders (Društvo Ekologi brez meja), Let’s Do it Foundation, the Estonian University of Life Sciences and Tallinn University, we have built a coalition of partners with a wide range of zero waste and educational knowledge needed to achieve the vision of the project – to create the training and capacity building framework for zero waste expertise to flourish at the local level.

The project had 2 main objectives, to create a strong curricula for advancing the zero waste cities movement in Europe and to kick-start a European network of zero waste trainers to implement this framework in their local communities, which would subsequently increase the scale and impact of our work.Within the project we created two training formats, one for zero waste ambassadors (those helping the implementation of local strategies) and the other for zero waste trainers (those training the ambassadors). Both formats consist of training materials and opportunities, as well as a certification system to celebrate and verify those who have undergone this training. 

As part of this project, a set of three tools have been created:

• Zero Waste Training Handbook: A curriculum that provides the set up, structure and reasons for selecting topics and competences in training Zero Waste Ambassadors and Trainers.The handbook goes deeper into the topics themselves, and offers additional exercises and materials. Seperate chapters can be found here.
• Zero Waste Trainer Curriculum: Educators who have familiarized themselves with the content of the Zero Waste Training Handbook can use this framework and resources provided within this document to create their own training activities.
• Zero Waste Ambassador Curriculum: This curriculum provides educators with a framework and a set of activities to be able to teach the most important concepts and practical knowledge of how to implement zero waste strategies at the local level.

Who is involved?

Supported by: