What is?

Research and innovation are crucial in addressing the major issues facing the EU and its partner countries and upholding economic growth, social responsibility and sustainable development. Recently, the WASTE-CLUSTER initiative was launched with the ambition of involving different European Community funded research projects in an exchange of knowledge and experiences, learning from each other's strengths and weaknesses, defining regional strategies, investing in strengths through integral use of national and regional funding. The WASTE-CLUSTER as it stands currently is a 'genuine research-driven cluster' of cooperating regions with a strong emphasis on exchange of best practices and knowledge transfer. Due to the involvement of partners from the Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs), the cluster's main target is knowledge transfer from North to South to directly enhance visibility of the MPCs in the cluster and prepare the grounds for their integration into the European Research Area (ERA).

Who is participating?

The WASTE-cluster is currently composed of 4 projects with 43 partners funded under the Regions of Knowledge & Research Potential programmes. Participating countries are Morocco, Tunisia, Spain, Finland, Netherlands, Portugal, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, (Israel), Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In order to contribute to the objectives of the WASTE-cluster, interested participants/clusters/networks, key stakeholders, managing authorities, scientific teams etc. can join anytime.