A World Apart

WASTE exists this year 25 years and to celebrate this joyious event, WASTE is organising several occasions to discuss themes that are at the heart of the organisation.

On 13 March 2009, WASTE with the support of several waste management and development experts, organised the meeting 'A World Apart: Potentials and Pitfalls at the Intersection of Development and Waste Management. The objective of this discussion afternoon was to share ideas and experiences about good – and not so good – practice in waste management, recycling, and development. The “goal behind the goal” was to open a discussion in the Netherlands about how to improve outcomes of this kind of co-operation, and also to avoid certain kinds of failures and errors that commonly occur when experts from certain disciplines, specifically waste management, recycling, environmental governance – operate as amateurs in another discipline, that is, in development co-operation projects.

Participants included representatives of Dutch municipalities that are implementing waste management related projects with twinning cities in transition and low-income countries; Dutch Foundations that implement waste management projects, experts in Dutch waste management; representatives of Association of Dutch Municipalities International (VNGI) and WASTE staff. A participant list is available on the waste website at [link](***IH is this possible/desirable?)
The meeting was kicked off by Jaap Breugem, Director VNGI setting different perspectives on 'development work'. Cok van Bergen Henegouw, HVC, provided a description of the cooperation between the Dutch municipality Velzen and the Muncipality Galle in Sri Lanka: the process of cooperation between the two municipalities and the eventual decision of both municipalities to end the cooperation on waste management.
These two perceptions formed the basis for five discussion groups on the topics plastic recycling, composting, the donation process of waste trucks, recycling in low-income countries and transition countries, and the essence of money in development work.
Participants overall responded positively on the content and process of the meeting, and the participants proposed concrete follow-ups in the following forms:

To set up a 'knowledge bank' on waste management and development (WASTE is already in the process of setting up a Portal on waste management and development);
To explore whether there is room for an NGO Platform in the recently; established Netherlands Waste Management Partnership (NWMP) (this item will be brought in the next NWMP board meeting);
To ensure that the participants will be able to find each other for concrete questions (all participant will receive the participant list with contact details, a 'linked in' group will be created