December 2018 – May 2021

The WasteForce project, acronym for Deterring and disrupting illegal trade and management of Waste by developing Tools for Enforcement, Forensics and Capacity Building, aimed at boosting the operational activities and capacities of authorities involved in the fight against illegal trade and management of waste through:

• development of new practical tools and methodologies
• implementation of multi-stakeholder capacity building activities
• support of operational networking among practitioners in Europe and with their counterparts in the Asia- Pacific region, one of the main regions of destination of illicit waste shipments.

To achieve these objectives, the project provided beneficiaries with hands-on up-to-date instruments, including strategic information sharing tools and methodologies, and forensics tools, to facilitate their everyday work in detecting illegal trade and management of waste. Building on those instruments, the project organised multi-disciplinary training sessions and webinars to enhance authorities’ capacities. Looking at the international routes of transboundary waste shipments, the project also enhanced international operational networking between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region through information-sharing activities and dedicated training materials.

Publications

Waste Crime Alerts

• Waste Crime Alerts (February 2019 – December 2020)

Methodologies

• Methodology to Analyse EU and Global Impacts on Waste Management of New Policies (March 2020)
• Paper: Understanding the Impacts of Transboundary Waste Shipment Policies: The Case of Plastic and Electronic Waste (April 2020)
• Methodology on how to measure environmental and economic damage of illegal waste transports (April 2020)

Tools

• Waste Crime Prosecution Guidance (July 2020), also available in Cantonese, Khmer, Thai and Vietnamese.
• Forensic Data Analysis for Waste Trafficking (September 2020)

Operational Networking EU-Asia Pacific

• Assessment of Information Exchange Mechanisms: Needs and Possibilities (February 2020) and Underused Information Exchange Mechanisms Used in Case of Illegal Shipments (February 2020)
• Best practices of repatriation of illegal waste shipments from Asia to Europe (February 2020), also available in Cantonese, Khmer, Thai and Vietnamese.
• WasteForce training materials 24-26 February 2021 available in English, Cantonese, Khmer, Thai and Vietnamese.

Videos

• Instruction video “Forensic Data Analysis for Waste Trafficking Tool“
• WasteForce Project video
• Waste Shipment Regulation Instruction video – IRSOP Slovenia

Project Partners

• IMPEL – The European Union Network for the Implementation and Enforcement of Environmental Law
• DHPol – Deutsche Hochschule der Polizei (Germany)
• IGAMAOT – The General Inspectorate for Agriculture, Sea, Environment and Spatial Planning (Portugal)
• IRSOP – The Inspectorate of RS for the environment and spatial planning (Slovenia)
• NFI – The Netherlands Forensic Institute (Netherlands)
• UNITAR – The United Nations Institute for Training and Research
• UNU – United Nations University (Japan)
• UL – University of Limerick (Ireland)

Associate partners

• BCRC Slovakia – The Regional Centre of the Basel Convention for Training and Technology Transfer for Central and Eastern Europe (Slovakia)
• District Government of Lower Bavaria (Germany)
• Environment Agency for England (United Kingdom)
• UN Environment (subcontractor)

The WasteForce project was funded by the European Union’s Internal Security Fund — Police (ISFP/2017/AG/ENV/821345) and coordinated by the IMPEL Network.