News and events published on the EcoAP Community Platform

• News - "Call for proposals under Erasmus+ Key Action 3 — Support for Policy Reform: Support for SMEs engaging in apprenticeships"
• New event - "European Biomass Conference and Exhibition (EUBCE)"
• New topics on the forum Environmental policy and regulation: Creating Incentives for Greener Products — what are the options? & Climate change adaptation - how to integrate migration issues in policy responses?
• New topics on the forum Demonstration projects: Two new studies demonstrate ways to mitigate pollution from pesticides & Can housing corporations, companies & associations play a greater role in recycling & sorting waste?
• New event - "International Circular Economy Conference: 'Opportunities and challenges'"

Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek is a pioneering voice in debates about environmental sustainability and resource efficiency. His background is in chemistry, and he was formerly a founding vice president of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, where he developed theories on “material input per service unit,” or the amount of resources needed to provide a certain function. This was expressed through the idea of “ecological rucksacks” that products carry with them. He later established the International Factor 10 Institute to work on economy-wide resource productivity. In this interview, he outlines the ecological rucksack concept and discusses the central role of resource efficiency in environmental sustainability.

Europe and Korea can learn from one another to bolster eco-innovation, move closer to a circular economy and deliver on the new global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, concluded decision-makers from both regions at the 19th Forum on Eco-Innovation held in Seoul, the Republic of Korea, on 27-28 October 2015. Delegates from business, government and civil society exchanged best practice examples of eco-innovation, compared and contrasted sustainable consumption and production policies, and acknowledged that they are bound together by the SDGs agreed in New York in September this year.

A group of Norwegian shipping companies has come together to work on five pilot projects that are intended to improve the environmental performance of shipping that operates close to shore, such as ferries or short-distance freight. The main aim of the scheme, known as the Green Coastal Shipping Programme, is to look at cleaner energy sources, and to thus contribute to making Norway’s coastal shipping fleet the world’s most environmentally efficient.