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Towards a Circular Economy – Untapping the potential of biowaste: opportunities and challenges ahead

17th March 2021 · 11:00 AM (CET)

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There is vast untapped potential for valorising bio-waste in Europe. EU policies such as the new Waste Framework Directive (WFD), which mandates bio-waste collection from 1 January 2024 onwards, seeks to support this. The European Green Deal aims to accelerate the transition towards a circular economy, and reduce food loss and waste

But how big is the potential? And how can it be untapped?

In 2020, BIC has teamed up with Zero Waste Europe (ZWE) to produce a first-of-its-kind report estimating the current and future availability of bio-waste in the EU-27. The full report has been published including country-speciﬁc factsheets (for the EU-27, the United Kingdom and Norway).

Now, together with EU and national policy-makers, as well as key stakeholders and practitioners, we would like to discuss in an online event the issue of bio-waste.

The objectives of this webinar are:

To present the findings of the ZWE report, including success stories from industry and municipalities for bio-waste collection and treatment; &
To discuss opportunities and challenges of untapping the potential of bio-waste, also in regard to the WFD obligation to separately collect biowaste by 2023.

Read the detailed agenda of the event here.

Speakers

Elsi Katainen

Member of the European Parliament

Elsi Katainen is a Finnish Member of the European Parliament in Renew Europe Group on her second parliamentary term. She is a member and a vice-chair of AGRI committee and a member of TRAN committee. Mrs Katainen acted as a rapporteur for CAP transitional regulation on 2020 and she is her group’s negotiator on Biodiversity Strategy in AGRI committee. She has worked as a rapporteur in Horizon Europe’s Agri-cluster and as a shadow rapporteur for unfair trading practices directive in the food chain. Before joining European Parliament she served as a Member of Finnish Parliament for 11 years. Find Mrs Katainen on social media, @ElsiKatainen, or fb.com/EKatainen.

Enzo Favoino

Scientific Coordinator, Zero Waste Europe

Enzo is a technical expert and researcher at the Scuola Agraria del Parco di Monza, and has decades of experience of separate waste collection, recycling, composting and prevention. Enzo is an expert in EU waste legislation and is highly knowledgeable in the field of European policy-making. He is one of the founders of the European Compost Network, and the coordinator of the Scientific Committee of the Zero Waste Research Centre in Italy.

Almut Reichel

Project Manager, European Environment Agency (EEA)

Almut Reichel is an expert on circular economy and waste at the European Environment Agency (EEA), located in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the EEA, she has for example developed assessments on municipal waste and bio-waste as well as on circular economy, and has co-led the development of the EEA’s State of the Environment and Outlook Report 2020. Almut is an environmental engineer by training. Before joining the EEA, she has worked on waste management in the private sector in Germany, on best available technologies in the German Environment Agency, and on assessing waste policies in Germany during her employment at the secretariat of the German Advisory Council on the Environment.

Jouni Ponnikas

Director, Regional Development Kainuu region (Finland)

Jouni Ponnikas (Ph.D.) Director, Regional Development works at Regional Council of Kainuu. On his responsibilities is coordination of regional development programs including the smart specialisation strategy (RIS3) of Kainuu as well as regional monitoring and foresight. Earlier he worked at the University of Oulu, Kajaani University Consortium, Adult and Continuing Education unit as a responsible researcher on evaluation and regional research. During 2005–2010 he was the director of Lönnrot Institute of Kajaani University Consortium. Ponnikas is specialised in program based regional developing, strategic planning, program and project evaluation and regional and rural research. He has coordinated numerous national and international studies and projects on these fields and has been a member of several national and international regional research and evaluation networks and expert panels, like European Evaluation Network for Rural Development, EU Expert Committee on Evaluation of Rural Development Programmes, Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC), Agricultural European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI) and European Network for Rural Development.

Daniele Turati

R&D Project Manager at Novamont

Daniele is Novamont’s R&D chemometrics and Experimental Design Manager and Foams technology Manager and supports different business areas (R&D, Production, Engineering, Quality Assurance, Quality Control) in the development of experimental plans and process optimization. In his role of Foam Technology Manager he is responsible for the development of new materials and applications in particular for protective packaging sector. He has coordinated from a technical point of view national and European R&D projects.

Jack McQuibban

Moderator - Zero Waste Cities Programme Coordinator, Zero Waste Europe

Jack has an educational background in international relations having studied at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. For the past 5 years, he has worked for two different NGOs within the international development and sustainability sectors, helping to build movements and communities for change. He has led successful campaigns at the local level within the UK as well as at the global level at institutions such as the United Nations. Jack will be leading our work with municipalities, helping to connect members from across Europe to build and contribute towards the transition of cities towards zero waste strategies.

Webinar features

Learn from frontrunners and high level experts without leaving your office
Understand how to design and implement successful zero waste programmes at the local level
Learn the stories behind the best practices
Be one step ahead with key conversations related to zero waste and circular economy strategies
Connect with like-minded local stakeholders

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