DERRY City and Strabane District Council’s Environment and Regeneration Committee have endorsed Council’s bid for membership of Zero Waste Europe – a network of communities across the continent where learning and experiences of reducing waste and improving recycling rates are shared.
The application is the latest move in Council’s adoption of a Circular Economy / Zero Waste Strategy in December 2017 which aims to keep resources and products in use for as long as possible, extracting maximum value before recovering and regenerating them at the end of their life cycle.
Zero Waste Europe have developed a Masterplan that incorporates a toolkit and a set of roadmaps setting out the actions that communities should take in order to achieve zero waste status.
Mayor of Derry City and Strabane District Council, Councillor Michaela Boyle, welcomed Council’s application to join the network.
“A lot of key actions have already been implemented to move Council towards a Circular Economy Zero Waste District making us a prime candidate for membership of Zero Waste Europe,” she noted.
“The application is in keeping with a key element of the strategy to engaging and sharing practices with other municipalities who have adopted a similar position and have begun the process of transforming their areas into Zero Waste communities.
“The Strategy is a key objective identified in the Strategic Growth Plan and points the way towards achieving sustainable waste management practices while also creating economic activity by linking job creation to waste recovery and treatments.”
Chair of Derry City and Strabane District Council’s Environment and Regeneration Committee, Councillor Brian Tierney, said the move was the latest in a series of positive initiatives to progress the strategy.
“Our Council has been one of the leading regions in the UK and Ireland in progressing the transition to a Zero Waste Circular Economy, improving recycling rates and building a more sustainable region,” he noted.
“We were one of the first public bodies to endorse the strategy and now have food waste collection services in almost all households while just this week we rolled out a Green Waste Pilot scheme to almost 13,000 households.
“Earlier this year Council hosted a high level workshop in Belgium where 10 other regions from the island of Ireland joined five expert cities in Belgium, Flanders and the Netherlands to share experiences of good environmental practice as we transition towards an all island circular economy.”
A circular economy is about moving away from the ‘extraction-production-consumption-throwaway’ culture and closing the loop so that the resources that go into our products are reclaimed, recycled and valued forever.
It aims to foster a new attitude to design in manufacturing as well as new attitudes among consumers.
For more on Council’s Waste and Recycling Services visit derrystrabane.com/recycling
