Argentina launches online waste management training

Argentina's ministry of the environment and sustainable development has launched the first Spanish-language open-access, online training course on the circular economy and waste management and innovation.

The course aims to promote the integral municipal management of solid waste towards a circular economy; development of awareness of sustainability based on minimization, recovery and recycling of waste, and is focused on sanitation and closure of open-air landfills, the ministry said in a statement.

The training is aimed at municipal officials and staff, provincial environmental authorities, non-governmental organizations and the general public with an interest in the topic.

It will also contribute to the implementation law 25,916 on minimum environmental protection budgets for domestic solid waste, and will also provide both theoretical and practical tools for the self-assessment of local systems, it added.

Registration for the training course is available until August 12. The course will begin on August 15 and continue until December 1. More information can be found here in Spanish.

The course content has been evaluated by the Ellen McArthur Foundation, a pioneer in the circular economy model.

The circular economy, as described by the Foundation, is "one that is restorative and regenerative by design, and which aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times, distinguishing between technical and biological cycles."

END OF OPEN-AIR LANDFILLS

"We don't want people to talk of trash any longer, but rather of waste as a resource through a circular economy," said the nation's minister of the environment and sustainable development, Sergio Bergman, in a recent official statement. "We have a goal, which is to put an end to open-air landfills."

Argentina recently published an international tender to build a solid urban waste treatment and disposal plant and eventually close down the open-air landfill in Catamarca province.

Along the same lines earlier this week, Panama launched the country's national waste management plan, which involves the closure of open-air landfills and the construction of seven waste disposal plants.