ECOVAL organises a waste collection on Tambo Island as part of Let’s Clean Up Europe 2022 campaign

 

On the 15th of November, the ECOVAL SUDOE project will carry out a waste collection campaign in which second year students from Los Sauces secondary school will participate. The activity will take place in Tambo Island (Poio, Pontevedra), on the occasion of the European Week of Waste Reduction and framed in the initiative Let’s Clean Up Europe 2022, which aims to clean the largest number of sites on the European continent while raising awareness among citizens about the volume of waste present in their localities. One of the objectives of this activity from ECOVAL is to educate new generations about the importance of recycling and preserving a healthy and clean environment, as well as to join forces between different groups to generate synergies around the project.

 

The event, jointly organised by FEUGA and CETAQUA with the collaboration of VIAQUA and the Council of Poio will start at 9:30 am and, after the cleaning of the island, those responsible for the activity will give a talk on the importance of the correct separation of waste at source and the brown bin for organic matter, without which the ECOVAL project could not be carried out. Indeed, proper waste separation is essential for innovation and economic projects to be carried out, as organic waste and sewage sludge are the raw material on which the ECOVAL Sudoe project feeds, transforming this waste into high added value products such as Volatile Fatty Acids (VFAs), valuable resources for the plastics and agrochemical industries.

 

Back on land, the students will finally visit the Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) of Os Praceres (Pontevedra), managed by Viaqua, where the key process of urban wastewater treatment will be explained to the students, emphasizing the individual responsibility of each citizen in this project and the benefits it brings to society as a whole. It is vitally important that young people are aware of this process and, consequently, of the problems caused by improperly flushing waste down the toilet, such as clogged sewers and treatment plants and the degradation of the oceans’ wealth.

 

This activity is included in ECOVAL’s awareness campaign on the separation of organic waste aimed at the new generations, joining those previously carried out in six schools in Castilla y León by the Natural Heritage Foundation of Castilla y León, as well as the four carried out by FEUGA and CETAQUA in four schools in Galicia. In this way, ECOVAL reaches the figure of approximately 450 students aware of this issue, bringing science closer to citizens and helping to build a sustainable future based on the principle of circular economy.

12th Urban Intelligence and Sustainability Forum – GreenCities

Thanks to one of our associated partners, Aquona, Ecoval‘s name was present during the 12th Urban Intelligence and Sustainability Forum – GreenCities, on 29 September in Málaga.

This event brought together key opinion leaders in the field of urban management and the mobility of the future in the same space. During two days, the Palacio de Ferias y Congresos de Málaga was packed with ideas and case studies related to sustainability, innovation and circular economy, sharing knowledge, synergies and talent.

Laura de Vega Franco, Director of Sustainable Development at Aquona, participated in the round table organised by the Sustainable Development Department of the Government of Castilla-La Mancha, entitled “The 2030 Agenda from global to local, praxis in Circular Economy, Energy Transition and Digitalisation”. It was here that the ECOVAL project was presented and where it was ensured that “companies, in addition to sustainability, contribute to innovation and digitalisation of the commitment to the circular economy and to the promotion of the 2030 Agenda in the territory”.

Ecoval: participant of the European Green Week 2021

Ecoval Sudoe, together with the Conserval Poctep and Cigat Biofactoría projects, also led by Cetaqua Galicia, was the protagonist on June 9 – from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. – of an event within the framework of the EU Green Week under the title: “Zero pollution society: citizens and industry to climb on a circular strategy”.

In the first part of the event the activities carried out by different Galician companies and entities in the field of waste management were presented. After this general introduction of the topic, the projects of Ecoval, Conserval, and Cigat Biofactoria were presented, highlighting the existing links and complementarity between the different initiatives.

The three projects represent a perfect example of a circular economy, converting by-products and wastewater from the canning industry, urban organic waste, and sewage sludge into products with high added value.

  • ECOVAL: ECOVAL, the acronym for “Management coordination strategies and recovery of sludge and organic waste in the SUDOE region”, is a transnational cooperation project co-financed under the Interreg Sudoe 2014-2020 program through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The project, with partners from France, Portugal, and Spain, aims to promote the biofactory model to obtain bio-products with high added value from sewage sludge and urban bio-waste, a model replicable throughout the European Union.
  • CONSERVAL: CONSERVAL is a collaborative project between Spain and Portugal, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Interreg VA Spain-Portugal Program (POCTEP) 2014-2020, which aims to develop technologies for the recovery of by-products and water residuals from the canning sector in Galicia and the North of Portugal. CONSERVAL aims to transform these solid and liquid streams into higher value-added products with high business potential, such as specific volatile fatty acids, fish oils with a high content of Omega 3, and high-value protein hydrolysates.
  • CIGAT BIOFACTORÍA: The CIGAT-BIOFACTORÍA Mixed Unit, born within the framework of Galicia’s Smart Specialization Strategy (RIS3), was created with the aim of expanding the scope of purification processes, exploring solutions for the full use of the materials present in wastewater, as well as associated waste, contributing to a circular economy with zero waste.

European Green Week 2021

The Green Week of the European Union 2021 was celebrated from May 31 to June 4, 2021, with associated events scheduled throughout the European territory between May 3 and June 13.

Pursuing the objective of zero pollution, the event covered topics such as air, water, land, and food. Other relevant initiatives for the European Green Deal were discussed, such as climate one, the future Strategy on Chemical Substances, and initiatives dedicated to energy, industry, mobility, agriculture, fisheries, health, and biodiversity.

To contribute to this debate, the Fundación Empresa Universidad Gallega (FEUGA) added other projects both national and European to participate in the conference. Therefore, the projects IPMWORKS, VINIoT, VITICAST, VARROFORM, ROADMAP, and KETF4-GAS had also a leading role within the conference.

Find in the following document all the information about the different panels that have comprised the event and the speakers who have intervened.