The ECOSWEEE Project organized its second Advisory Board (AB) meeting on Wednesday 8th November

The ECOSWEEE Project organized its second Advisory Board (AB) meeting on Wednesday 8th November. Participants received an update on the project activities, including a presentation of the mapping of best practices for collection of small WEEE and waste portable batteries, a summary of the results from the stakeholder workshop, an overview of the preliminary recommendations for the design and implementation of incentive-driven take back scheme, and an outline of the ECOSWEEE Pilots. Elizabeth O’Reilly from WEEE Ireland, one of the project pilot implementers, presented its Blue Battery Box & Charity Incentive programme and Carsten Waldeck, a member of the AB, presented the deposit return system (DRS) implemented by his company SHIFT GmbH.

General discussions covered among others the benefits and challenges associated with DRS, consumers’ behavior and awareness, and the opportunity and added value to combine different incentives, such as contest and raffles with charity donation or non-monetary reward.

The next AB meeting will take place in about one year, to discuss the outcomes of the pilots’ impact assessment and the project’s key conclusion and recommendations.

Core consortium kick-off meeting

The official kick-off meeting of the ECOSWEEE project was a 2-day event held in Brussels (Belgium) on May 11th and 12th. Representatives from core organisations involved in the consortium (WEEE Forum, UNITAR, SPI, ERION and Ramboll), as well as from the European Commission (Maria Banti, EC officer) participated in the meeting.

The objective of the meeting was to lay the foundations for the ECOSWEEE project, in order to get the project off the ground and officially get started on the proceedings for the implementation of the activities planned.

This core meeting will be continued by an online consortium meeting on May 25th with representatives from all organisations.