A great event in Netherlands

Last week I was in Leeuwarden, Netherlands for the ISWA Beacon Conference on Waste Prevention, organized by NVRD, the Dutch National member of ISWA.

I had the honor and the pleasure to chair the first day of the conference and to watch carefully the second one. So allow me to say, that this was one of the most interesting conferences I have ever participated.

For a so difficult as well as complex issue as waste prevention is, there was a remarkable effective combination of theory and practice, in a way that I consider should be emblematic for ISWA’s events.

Very careful selection of high quality speakers, topics that cover the whole spectrum of waste prevention, intensive interaction between participants - speakers and a fruitful networking were just some of the advantages.

Beside them, a very warm hospitality and well organized events allowed participants to spend some happy time between the intensive conference sessions.

As for the content, the issues of behavioral science were well balanced with the changes required on the industrial level in order to achieve waste prevention in practice. Psychology, sociology and communication science should be combined with an industrial revolution (eco-design) in order to close the cycle of a lot of materials and achieve minimum environmental impacts from production and consumption of products.

I have to write my special thanks to all NVRD people for their hard efforts and the successful event. NVRD is really an organization that is going up, getting more mature as well as more effective, as I had the opportunity to understand with my eyes. Needless to say that it was a great honor for me to be one of the speakers in its annual congress.

Maarten, Eric my congratulations are a least recognition for your efforts. Participants’ comments and compliments are more than enough to encourage you, NVRD and ISWA to go on with such events.

keep walking guys, we need more such initiatives