The international Waste Alliance is to network over 30 different organisations from business, civil society and science in order to install new projects for waste avoidance, recycling and professional disposal in developing and emerging countries. The members want to work together for the prevention, collection, recycling and use of secondary raw materials in developing and emerging countries. The focus is on plastic waste from packaging and disposable products as well as waste from electrical and electronic equipment. "The environmental service branch must become the top topic on the international agenda in the coming years", BDE President Peter Kurth called for at the start of the alliance. "We must understand waste even more as a raw material. This is the key to the circular economy," Kurth continued. The Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Dr. Gerd Müller, opened the founding event of PREVENT.
The participants include the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Federal Environment Ministry (BMU), the Federal Association of the German Waste Management, Water and Raw Materials Industry (BDE), WWF Germany, the Wuppertal Institute and the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging (IVV). The industry is represented by Nestlé, Werner & Mertz and ALPLA as well as social enterprises such as Grameen Creative Lab and Plastic Bank. The participating companies from waste and recycling industriy include Der Grüne Punkt, Umicore, Remondis, Wastecon and Blackforest Solutions. Members also include the German RETech Partnership and the Gesamtverband Kunststoffverarbeitender Industrie (GKV). Scientific founding members of PREVENT include the Wuppertal Institute, chairs and institutes of the universities of Dresden, Kassel and Rostock, the United Nations University and the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE).
Further information: www.prevent-waste.net
Sources:
- recyclingmagazin.de (10.5.2018)
- bmz.de (9.5.2019)
- Photo: bmz.de