On the 19th and 20th of January 2021 the fourth Interregional meeting of the partners of the project Optiwamag - Optimization of Waste Management in urban areas and in households was held in Casalgrande (RE), but it was held, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in virtual mode.
The objective of the project is to offer innovative proposals to optimize the management policies of urban solid waste and in households, through the development of regional action plans to improve their efficiency.
To do this, the six European partners from Portugal, Sweden, Latvia, Greece, Hungary and Italy have created a strong interregional and interinstitutional collaboration to exchange experiences, share good practices, in a perspective of co-learning and knowledge transfer, as indicated in the principles of the INTERREG Europe funding program.
If during the first year of the project the partners have focused on the analysis of the strengths and possible areas of intervention of their respective waste management tools, now, according to the work plan, the partners are preparing to enter the decisive phase of the project: in fact, already by the end of this third semester that will end in January 2021, the partners have begun to lay the foundations of their regional action plans.
In fact, during the meeting of January 19 and 20, 2021, the partners shared their proposals for a Framework Strategy (FWS), understood here as a flexible tool, drafted by the task force of experts, which takes into account the evidence, best practices, success factors, lessons and recommendations derived from the analysis of interregional meetings and self-evaluation reports.
The process of elaboration of the FWS is still in progress: however, among the proposals submitted, the one identified as most convincing by the partnership is the one presented by the Municipality of Casalgrande (Italy). In fact, it will be the Italian draft, supplemented by the Greek draft, that will shape the final version of the Optiwamag FWS.
This will form the backbone of the action plan that will guide partners and stakeholders in the drafting of the same plan in the months to come. It is from the FWS that the Optiwamag partners perceived the need to start reflecting also on the good practices to be exchanged within the partnership, which will be the focus of the next semester's work.
