• Med4Waste promoted the utilisation and widest dissemination of successful practices and results of previously financed projects on municipal waste management.
• The main achievements have been the development of a MOOC with more than 200 students enrolled so far, the elaboration of a catalogue with 22 solutions on waste management, the engagement with more than 400 stakeholders, the development of more than 30 awareness rising campaigns, and the creation and/or improvement of 6 Integrated Municipal Waste Management Plans (IWMP) in 3 countries.
• Med4Waste comes to an end supporting and strengthening the Mediterranean regional dialogue and cooperation on sustainable waste management.

Urban waste management is one of the most important and urgent challenges facing the Mediterranean region. Several factors contribute to aggravate the situation, such as population growth, increasing tourism or the absence of adequate waste management policies. In the southern and eastern Mediterranean, the challenges in this field are even more acute, in many cases due to high population pressures or the low availability of waste management infrastructures.

The Med4Waste project, co-financed with European funds from the ENI CBC Med programme, has been working to facilitate new governance models for integrated and efficient urban waste management policies to help solve these issues in the Mediterranean Region.

The projects funded by ENI CBC Med are designed to foster cooperation and dialogue between the participating countries, and to favour the creation of cooperation networks and knowledge exchange. The ENI CBC Med program is working on some of these challenges in waste management with a series of projects to create experiences of cooperation between countries, with emphasis on the management of organic matter, the implementation of circular economy practices, the training of citizens, and the implementation of innovative legislative tools.

Med4Waste is a capitalisation project, meaning that it promotes the utilisation and widest dissemination of successful practices and results of previously financed projects. The process of capitalisation has three main steps: the identification of successful practices from other projects, the replication and reuse of those practices, and lastly the mainstreaming of said practices into public policies.

One of the relevant resources is the Med4Waste Waste Management Catalogue that aimed at providing waste management experts and decision-makers in the Mediterranean region with valuable insights into the accomplishments and promising outputs of its capitalised projects. This catalogue, with more than 22 innovative solutions divided between 6 categories, serves as exemplary models for replication. This catalogue offers a comprehensive overview of the implemented activities, success stories and invaluable lessons learned. Moreover, it analyses the key enabling factors that ensure the seamless transferability of the identified outputs. To reach the second goal, two outputs have been developed, the Med4ZeroWaste & Circular Economy Course and the Mentoring Scheme (more info here).

The lack of appropriate policies about waste management is often caused by a lack of access to up-to-date knowledge on the subject, both in terms of technical staff and political representatives of local governments. To help deal with this reality, the Med4Waste project developed an online course open to anyone interested in improving municipal waste management with knowledge about circular economy and the application of zero waste practices in the Mediterranean region. The course is available in English and Arabic, and always will be free for everyone interested. The course has almost 200 students enrolled so far from, and the number keeps growing every week (more info here).

Making up-to-date waste management knowledge available and accessible for everyone in the Mediterranean region.

The Mentoring Scheme was designed to create and/or improve the integrated municipal waste management plans (IWMP) of 6 selected cities from the southern Mediterranean region (Lebanon, Jordan, and Tunisia), to help them implement tailor-made supporting actions to implement those plans; and promote the replication of successful actions being implemented in other projects from the ENI CBC Med community through a twinning and exchange program. The six cities carried out supporting actions for their IWMP such as studies on the pricing system, trainings for municipal staff, awareness campaigns, and coaching for school teachers.

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The operational know-how of the Med4Waste project has been used to develop a Policy Toolkit on Solid Municipal Waste Management, which contains policy recommendations and guidelines for decision makers. It synthesizes the main lessons learned from the Med4Waste activities oriented at building skills, planning, and decision-making capacities of Mediterranean municipalities and waste management practitioners, on top of the achievements and challenges of the capitalised projects, amongst other sources of knowledge. It also takes note of the state of play in municipal solid waste management in Mediterranean countries, taking account of national and local contexts and policies while also addressing the main bottlenecks. Overall leading to policy recommendations for national, regional, and local authorities seeking to enhance sustainable waste management and specifically its organic component.

Reaching policy makers at the municipal, regional, and Mediterranean levels to help reach the goals of the with the support of the 2030 GreenerMed Agenda with the support of the Union for the Mediterranean.

To disseminate all this information, more than 30 different awareness rising campaigns have been carried out. One of the more impactful ones is the development of a videogame to increase awareness and knowledge about waste management amongst young people in the Mediterranean region. The videogame, named Eco-Builder, incorporates knowledge from the successful practices in its design, and there are PC, Android, and iOS versions available (more info here).

Let's play for a cleaner Mediterranean! Empowering youth people with waste knowledge.

The project organised its final event from the 24^th to the 26^th of October in Sardinia, Italy, a 3-day long event co-organized with the WES-MED project. The event brought together more than 200 policy makers, ministry officials, local authorities, the private sector, NGOs, researchers from more than 23 countries, and stakeholders, to strengthen capacities and skills for informed decision-making related to decentralized waste management in the region. The island of Sardinia was chosen as a host region that has a lot to show for itself in terms of its progress on this topic in the last years. The event combined working sessions and study visits, including the presentation of the Med4Waste key findings mentioned above, innovative practices and models applicable in various municipalities, and it helped strengthen the regional dialogue and cooperation on sustainable waste management (more info here). The project will end the 30^th of November, right after the Day of the Mediterranean, when we celebrate our shared identity, common heritage, and love for the Mediterranean. Caring about this means improving our waste management systems!