The European Week for Waste Reduction (EWWR), a project of the European Commission LIFE+ programme, will launch for its 12th year from tomorrow (21 November).

With this year’s slogan asking the public: ‘What’s your real weight?’ EWWR aims to build on the theme of ‘invisible waste’ and highlight the importance of preventing waste throughout the entire lifecycle of a product.

Organised with the help of action developers, coordinators and secretariats in 32 countries, this year’s EWWR will see 10,689 actions related to waste reduction, reuse, recycling and clean-ups carried out across the world.

Action developers include individual citizens, public authorities, associations and NGOs, businesses and schools. Each action developer organises one or more actions, which are then registered to a location where the action will be carried out.

Through these actions, participants will aim to inform the public, businesses, students and authorities about the need to reduce waste and recycle more and spread awareness about the wider problem of unsustainably high levels of consumption.

Actions proposed for this year’s edition of EWWR include Tesco donating surplus supermarket food and educating school children about food waste in Poland, a clean-up day held by a school in France and a virtual roundtable discussing a plastic-free Christmas period in Germany.

Virginijus Sinkevičius, European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, commented: “The EWWR is as topical as ever, because in the EU waste policy prevention is priority number one."