UrbanWINS, a project financed by the European Union meant t
o develop and test methods to elaborate and implement strategic eco-innovative plans for waste prevention, launched the UrbanWINS Agoras, a virtual community for sharing knowledge and starting discussions on waste, resources and innovation. The UrbanWINS Agoras facilitates citizens 'and other parties' involvement in the project, at the same time encouraging participants to generate ideas, create solutions and transit towards more sustainable consumption and production models. The UrbanWins Agoras can be accessed on the project's web site: https://www.urbanwins.eu/online-agora/
In addition to citizens' involvement, participants in the online "UrbanWINS Agoras" will include governments, organizations, waste management solution providers, research institutes and educational centers. The online platform will include international activities and ideas and also connect to face-to-face workshops and local actions organized in eight pilot cities across Europe, where participants will share opinions, discuss ideas and collectively plan solutions. These pilot cities include Cremona, Torino, two cities within the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, Albano Laziale and Pomezia (Italy), Bucharest (Romania), Leiria (Portugal), Manresa and Sabadell (Spain).
The recommendations and tools co-created with the involvement of citizens will be replicable to other cities. One of the final outcomes of the project will be a toolkit for participatory and science-based decision-making and planning for waste prevention and management that can be applied in any public authority across Europe.
The UrbanWINS web site - www.urbanwins.eu - that hosts the Agoras, has been functional for three months and already supplies complete information about the project's objectives and approach. Each of the pilot cities has its own page that contains detailed information on their own waste management and prevention strategies. An information tool (“Sector Watch”) has been developed within the project for those responsible with public acquisitions in the field of waste, which monitors and presents the latest news on this subject; it can be accessed at http://www.urbanwins.eu/resources/.
About the Project
UrbanWINS is a three-year project, launched in June 2016 and funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. The project analyzes how cities consume resources and products and eliminate resulting waste, in order to develop and test eco-innovative solutions and plans to improve waste management and prevention. The participatory approach is an added value to the UrbanWINS project, for it allows all relevant actors to be taken into consideration for waste management at urban level.