The session will explore how city planning, communities, academia and the youth can contribute to Zero-waste strategies in cities.

Zero-waste is a long-term goal to prevent and avoid the generation of waste, by implementing waste generation prevention and minimization strategies.

The webinar will describe how these strategies, to be successful, require the involvement of different stakeholders in cities.

The Partnership for Action on Challenges relating to E-waste (PACE II) contributed to this project, supporting community action to separate e-waste from household waste as well as awareness raising of e-waste in universities and schools, in China.

To register, click here.

As decision-makers are gathering this week at UNEA-6 to discuss how multilateralism can help tackle the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste, the conversation about the cooperation between environmental and customs authorities to support the enforcement of MEAs, in particular the Basel Convention to prevent and tackle the problem of illegal traffic of hazardous and other wastes is highly relevant.

This year the 8^th annual meeting of Environmental Network for Optimizing Regulatory Compliance on Illegal Traffic or in short ENFORCE was hosted by the World Customs Organization and allowed to hear voices from regions and globally about enforcement and environmental crimes challenges and opportunities. The eighth ENFORCE meeting was held back-to-back with the Green Customs Initiative Annual Partners Meeting and together these discussions fostered cooperation on a range of issues including best practices and actions undertaken to combat illegal traffic, the role of trade facilitation in promoting compliance to MEAs and enforcement issues.

See more in the Press release by WCO.

The BRS Secretariat supports tackling illegal traffic in hazardous and other waste by providing support to of the Project Unwaste Study Visit 2024, Brussels and Rotterdam, (29 January - 1 February 2024).

The Unwaste project aims to fight trafficking in waste between the EU and Southeast Asia by promoting enhanced EU-ASEAN Member States partnerships, in support of ongoing efforts towards a circular economy transition, in line with the relevant policy frameworks.

The project objectives are:

1. To better understand waste flows between Europe and Southeast Asia, with an additional focus on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on medical and hazardous waste movements.
2. To promote cooperation through national dialogues to combat illicit movements of waste from the EU towards Southeast Asia.
3. To facilitate intra- and inter-regional dialogues at the policy level to promote partnership between the EU and Southeast Asian countries, in support of the circular economy approach.

From 28 November to 1 December 2023, more than sixty members and observers of the expert working group on the review of Annexes will meet for the sixth time in Geneva to continue their work on the review of Annexes I, III and IV to the Basel Convention. Since its establishment in 2017, the group has been instrumental in facilitating the adoption by the 2022 meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the landmark e-waste amendments put forward by Ghana and Switzerland. It also paved the way to the proposal by the European Union to amend Annex IV, which was considered for the first time by the 2023 meeting of the Conference of the Parties.

In line with decision BC-16/15 and guided by Co-Chairs Magda Gosk (Poland) and Perine Kasonde (Zambia), the group will continue its work to improve legal clarity under the Convention with the expected development of revised amendment proposals on Annex IV and progress towards the development of revised draft recommendations on the review of Annexes I and III for consideration by the Open-ended Working Group at its fourteenth meeting (25-28 June 2024).

The Secretariat gratefully acknowledges the Governments of Norway, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and the European Union for their generous financial support to the work of the expert working group.

The meeting page can be accessed here.