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A Citizens’ Parliament to amend the Waste Management Plan for the Brussels Region
Every 5 years, a Waste Management Plan is drafted for the Brussels-Capital Region and a public survey is organised before final adoption. The public enquiry for the Third Waste Management Plan took place in 2003.
Previous plans focused on waste management aspects related to waste minimisation, selective collection and recycling. The Third Waste Plan innovates and strongly focuses on waste prevention, dematerialization and eco-consumption.
The Brussels Institute for the Management of the Environment (IBGE-BIM)seized this opportunity to raise public awareness on these issues. A very specific and innovative approach has been followed to carry out the public enquiry: its main element was the organization of a Citizens’ Parliament aiming to suggest amendments to the Plan. To prepare the debates, proposals have been collected and discussed during 4 months through different means. Participants to the Citizens’ Parliament were then invited to discuss these various proposals and to vote amendments.
Collecting proposals to amend the Waste Management Plan
The benefit of such active public enquiry are twofold:
- involvement of non-expert citizens, who do not usually participate in such consultation
- bringing very different persons together lead to very rich and comprehensive proposals.
The collection of proposals was organized around the
4 target groups for the measures foreseen in the Third Waste Management Plan: “schools”, “households”, “offices” and “retailers”.
4 thematic working groups focusing on these target groups formed the core of the consultation process. Between November 2002 and February 2003, each group met 4 times. The participants in the thematic groups spread around the enquiry
by meeting and consulting representatives of their respective target
groups.
- school target groups: students in public relations interviewed pupils from secondary schools and published the web-magazine “Echo-planète”. A class realized a CD-Rom with street interviews about eco-consumption.
- household target group: discussions took place within organized groups such as the House of Women, literacy tuition groups, district committees, yoga group, etc.
- office target group: the personal of a number of companies or public institutions have been consulted internally.
- retailer target group: meetings have been held with the 12 “Town Centre Managers” and with a consultative committee of the Middle Class.
Exhibition and newspaper to support traditional consultation
 This innovative approach complemented
the traditional means of consulting the public, i.e. through a questionnaire to fill in and send back. A main element in disseminating this questionnaire was the organization of an exhibition “At the wasteful and useless department”. This exhibition aimed to raise awareness of the general public on the issues of sustainable consumption and waste prevention, as well as to invite them to actively participate in the management of waste in their city. In addition, a whole issue of the quarterly newspaper “Ma ville, notre planète” was dedicated to explain to the general public the contents of the draft Plan. The questionnaire was also included in this publication, and made available on the Internet.
Results
All in all, the participation in preparing the Citizens’ Parliament is estimated to:
- 65 participants in thematic working groups
- more than 1,000 persons involved in discussion with the participants in the thematic groups
- more than 1,400 answers to the various questionnaires received.
All the proposals were compiled in a preparatory document, without prior agreement. The document was presented and discussed before the Citizens’ Parliament. There were 130 participants who voted for 5 priority measures.
A successful approach to further improve
The Citizens’ Parliament initiative succeeded in bringing together a wide range of stakeholders, even though participants were mainly representatives from the civil society rather than individual citizens. These organizations and the municipalities of the Brussels Region were very satisfied with such an initiative. This first and innovative experience was fruitful and the work realised appears quite useful and instructive in conducting further action in waste prevention. Indeed, it allowed the administration for the management of the environment of the Brussels-Capital Region to identify additional measures for protecting the environment, as well as new potential partners to develop further action.
Since it involves face-to-face meetings, the awareness raising effort may seem limited considering the number of people involved, yet the impact may be quite strong. In addition, this form of consultation allowed a very significant participation of schoolchildren and students who are usually not at all reached by such process.
The budget constituted the main obstacle but this only appeared during the debates. Indeed, the proposals of the Waste Management Plan had been discussed without being linked to the budget allocations. There was also only a limited budget available for additional measures. This will have to be taken into account in the future.
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Stakeholders and children expressed their views in Milton-Keynes
In September 1998, Milton-Keynes Council had to start a process of consultation on a new Waste Strategy. This new Waste Strategy was necessary since the Council had recently become responsible for both collecting and disposing of waste. The UK government recommended to integrate the management of waste into a global strategy that would form part of the Local Agenda 21 (the local integrated strategy for sustainability). In the process of setting up integrated strategies, and notably LA 21, consulting the citizens and stakeholder groups is an essential element.
This first consultation period lasted for almost 1 year. The first Waste Strategy for Milton-Keynes was published in July 1999 and addressed the period 2000-2010. However, a review process became necessary as early as 2001 due to new national targets, new quality indicators for waste services, the beginning of new contracts, the results of a comprehensive waste audit in Milton-Keynes showing alarming trends, and the likelihood of an increase of waste-related obligations.
Consultation process of large stakeholders
A consultation draft was sent to a list of stakeholders and consultees in January 2002 and was open to comments until the end of March. In February, a conference with 3 short workshops was organized. The participants in the workshops looked at the short-term actions, the long-term actions and the main aspects of short- and long-term actions. The full results are published on the Internet or available on hard copy under request; they are also summarized in an annex to the final waste strategy.
Results of the consultation
The consultation showed a strong support for the short term actions proposed in the draft, in particular for waste minimization. Many participants even felt that it should be strengthened. Weekly recycling, introduction of a kerbside composting scheme, and increased education were also advocated. The concept of “zero waste” was raised during the consultation and became the motto of the strategy, now a Zero Waste strategy.
For long-term actions, respondents were more uneasy. They had various opinions on how residual waste should be treated once recycling and composting have been maximized. Residents expressed their concerns for health and safety impacts of thermal treatments and felt that they lack information on the impacts of the technologies available. The issues of dumping of tyres and recycling in flats were also a matter of concern.
Childrens’ views on waste management
This type of consultation process mainly reaches experts, the big players of society, while individual citizens have little room to express themselves. In an attempt to counterbalance this a children’s initiative called ‘Commonwealth Common waste’ was initiated. In July 2002, schoolchildren held a “Pupils Commonwealth Heads of Government” meeting to look at issues of waste, and how it is handled in the different parts of the Commonwealth. They have requested that their conclusions from the day be included as part of the consultation. This initiative clearly contributed to raise children’s awareness on the waste management issues not only in their city, or in their country. It also enlarged their view and gave a global perspective to the problem. Notably, their conclusions show that they have realized the discrepancies in lifestyle of rich and poor nations, and how this influences the respective waste production.
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