Stepping Up Waste Prevention

Waste prevention is at the top of the waste hierarchy. It protects natural resources, diminishes waste and reduces the costs associated with waste management. However, in order to unlock its potentials, the political framework needs to be more concrete, for example by setting binding and specific waste prevention targets. It should be more progressive too, for example by including approaches that tackle waste behaviour change of individuals and groups in different social contexts. This is where the new Policy Brief that was conducted within the RECREATE project comes in. RECREATE, which is funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme, is a research network that aims at developing short and medium term options for European research and innovation policies in the fields of climate change, resource efficiency, and resources. Susanne Fischer (Research Unit Circular Economy at the Wuppertal Institute) and Mandy Hinzmann and Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers (Ecologic Institute) now published the project's seventh Policy Brief "Stepping up waste preventions – challenges and opportunities for national waste prevention programmes". The authors discuss waste prevention in terms of programmatic feasibility, economic benefits and the importance of behaviour changing measures. The Policy Brief is based on preliminary studies that were conducted by Susanne Fischer and Dr. Henning Wilts (Head of the Research Unit Circular Economy) and which were published as so-called evidence-based narratives within the RECREATE project.