Reuse of Waste through Arts and Crafts

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Projects background: Population increase, economic development and materialistic innovations increase demand for Earth’s finite resources. In natural settings there is no waste as outputs of one organism are consumed by other organisms. Humans not only produce low-value waste (e.g. landfill waste), but also through innovations, such as microplastics, pollute the ecosystem and thus themselves. This problem is recognised and addressed through a variety of policy instruments, for example the EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy. The EU average of the amount of municipal waste generated per capita has been dropping since 2007, however, both Estonia and Latvia have seen an increase of their national numbers over 25% within the last four years. The best strategy for dealing with waste is prevention, however the EST-LAT programme manual shows that only 43% of persons are very familiar with resource efficiency. The project contributes to EST-LAT’s priority 2. Clean and valued living environment, the specific objective is 2.2. Increased awareness of energy saving, sorting waste and re-use, and the more efficient management of common water resources. Cross-border nature: Cross-border cooperation is essential for reaching WasteArt’s objectives as different levels of expertise on different matters is available in both countries, for example Latvian experience on environmental assessment. Joint activities, such as teacher exchanges, will be organised to share experience and implement project activities more effectively by learning from each other’s mistakes. Public awareness in itself requires going beyond the local scale to ensure widescale information uptake. The project consortium has been compiled to ensure complimentary expertise where different types of organisations from different regions can contribute in implementing their shared goals and objectives. Objectives: The overall objective of the WasteArt project is to increase the awareness and change people’s habits towards more environmentally friendly behaviour concerning the waste reduction, re-use and recycling (Waste 3R). WasteArt will use to capacity of contemporary art and the diversity of artistic practices as tools for increasing public awareness about the vast amounts of waste produced from activities of everyday life and promote the Waste 3R among general publics; and through the introduction of Waste Audit approach will promote the Waste 3R at kindergartens and schools, thus strengthening environmental consciousness of future generations, and facilitate the uptake of project results by main stakeholders. Main activities: The project will increase public awareness of resource efficiency through organising two campaigns. A travelling artistic exhibition “NOT out of sight, NOT out of mind” will see 14 artworks developed by artists from Estonia, Latvia and abroad who will show their perspectives on the problem. The artworks will travel as a joint exhibition and be displayed in public locations across six programme area places targeting the general public. Each opening in a new place will be marked by an open communication event. This campaign will focus on conveying the messages of that we produce too much waste, that waste is a resource and that there are various smarter ways to reduce, reuse and recycle waste. The second campaign “Waste Audit and 3R” will target kindergartners, school-children and school staff. It will engage education institutions in using the Waste 3R approach, thus promoting the sustainable use of natural resources and reduction of waste. This goal will be achieved through developing and implementing a waste audit across 24 kindergartens and schools which identifies the type and amount of waste produced, thus addressing the causes not consequences of the problem. The children will be involved in arts and crafts reuse activities, thus both raising awareness and changing behaviour.

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