The Horizon 2020 Initiative aims to de-pollute the Mediterranean by the year 2020 by tackling the sources of pollution that account for around 80% of the overall pollution of the Mediterranean Sea: municipal waste, urban waste water and industrial pollution.
Horizon 2020 offers capacity building workshops to all member countries and one workshop took place from April 9th to 11th 2013 in Ramallah.
Three employees of the JSC had the chance to attend the workshop: Husain Abuoun, Said Hudairi and Arwa Nasser.
The workshop was titled Effective evaluation of performance, costs & cost recovery, viability and sustainability of projects.

And the outcomes and discussed topics were:
• Understand why accurate data collection and performance indicators provide the necessary information for project evaluation and benchmarking purposes
• Appraise the key issues related to costs and cost recovery in municipal solid waste management systems (including landfilling)
• Be able to reproduce the waste hierarchy (detailed), and
• Explain why Life Cycle Thinking and Life Cycle Analyses are indispensable tools for determining viability and sustainability of projects.
• Explain why evaluation is key in improving the implementation of municipal solid waste management systems (including landfilling)

One day of the workshop included a field trip with all participants to the Joint Service Council for Solid Waste Management in Hebron that covers the Governorate of Hebron and Bethlehem. For our colleagues of the JSC Ramallah and Al Bireh these are great possibilities to exchange knowledge, network and benefit from lessons learnt that the other JSC did.
The JSC in Hebron that is already in the construction phase of their sanitary landfill explained to the workshop participants how they planned and implemented the design on the ground, which obstacles they faced and what worked out successfully. Afterwards everybody got the chance to see some transfer stations that take care of cardboard and plastic separation as well as a small enterprise that deals with the recycling of plastic.
Green Palestine here we come!