Case Studies

Sweden is so good at recycling that, for several years, it has imported rubbish from other countries to keep its recycling plants going. Less than 1 per cent of Swedish household waste was sent to landfill last year or any year since 2011.

«Over time, Sweden has implemented a cohesive national recycling policy so that even though private companies undertake most of the business of importing and burning waste, the energy goes into a national heating network to heat homes through the freezing Swedish winter. “That’s a key reason that we have this district network, so we can make use of the heating from the waste plants. In the southern part of Europe they don’t make use of the heating from the waste, it just goes out the chimney. Here we use it as a substitute for fossil fuel,” Ms Gripwell says.»

→ https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-s-recycling-is-so-revolutionary-the-country-has-run-out-of-rubbish-a7462976.html

The EU takes great care to ensure that the resources they have access to are handled in a sustainable manner.
This is where the FarFish project comes in. Funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, FarFish will help collect important biological, environmental, economic and social data relevant for the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements and the EU fisheries in international waters; and FarFish will work closely with stakeholders in order to create accessible and adaptable fisheries management tools. The project has a strong focus on helping partners in the coastal states and the European fishing fleet to improve fisheries management and enhance skills, processes and resources. Not only will FarFish improve the sustainability and profitability of the European fishing fleet operating outside European waters, it will also provide new knowledge, education and training to the fishing industry.

Creating a sustainable global economy in the 21st century will require partnerships between governments, businesses, and NGOs. The good news is that there’s increasing willingness to cooperate.
« I think it’s the role for partnerships in the 21st century and the good news is, that there’s much more willingness to partner now between governments, often a UN agency like Unicef and WHO if it’s health issues, and businesses that are progressive, and NGO’s, the **** firms, the Care’s, the Mercy Corps, the Irish Concerns, they’re all more than willing now to be in innovative partnerships, then you have the role of the foundations and the Rockefeller, Gaits, and the big players who have a big role to play.  And my interest in the work we’ve been doing is to constantly capacity build local civil society groups, NGOs locally, because they’re the sustainable ones, they’re the ones that carry on in the future. »