The conference was inaugurated by the Vice-Rector of Sustainable Development of the UPV; Débora Domingo Calabuig. Welcoming remarks were also given by the General Director of Ecological Innovation in Construction of the Valencian Community; Nuria Matarredona Desantes, the Director of the School of Construction at UPV; Fernando Cos-Gayon and the Vice-Rector for Employment and Lifelong Learning of the UPV; Mª Dolores Salvador Moya. Mª Elia Verdevío Escribá, the mayor of Bétere, also welcomed the audience on behalf of the host public authorities. Elisa Peñalvo Lopez and Javier Cárcel Carrasco as coordinators of the CONDEREFF project continued, also welcoming our Policy Officer; Mariame Ammour and opening the floor to contributions from the regions.

•    During the conference, the CONDEREFF project was widely disseminated, covering the objectives pursued during the four and a half years of the project, as well as the results achieved to date. Each partner had the opportunity to share their action plan, implementation progress and next steps. Final results are expected in a few months.

•    Stakeholders also had the opportunity to exchange experiences individually and jointly as well as answer questions from the audience in a round table discussion.

On behalf of the town council of Bétera (Valencia, Spain), Aurora Martínez Corral and Antonio José Sánchez Crespo, municipal technicians, presented a successful case of application of the toolkit developed through the project.

On behalf of the Lazio region, Ing. Stefano Cicerani addressed the issue of the “End of Waste legislation".

Others presented experiences gained through the CONDEREFF project. Some of them were Nicolas Emin from Ville & Amenagement Durable together with Gregoire Thonier from AURA-EE who presented the annual review of the regional working group on the re-use of C&D waste in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.

Also, Konstantia Vrakopoulou from the programming dpt. Region of Thessaly talked about lessons learned.

Finally, Dipl.-Ing. Jürgen Jereb together with Dr. Ingrid Winter shared the implementation of the project and in particular the circular economy at the municipal level, together with some best practices implementation.

 

•    The event also raised public awareness of the importance of sustainable construction in order to achieve more efficient demolition, with a higher percentage of recycled waste. The advisory board of the project, the National Agency for New Technologies (ENEA), was present to share their studies and contributions on the more technical issues related to CDWs.

•    In addition, it also served to create synergies to improve replicability in other European regions, or even globally, as was the case with colleagues from Mexico.

Sustainable restoration and conservation strategies based on CDW and the toolkit, applied to a case study: Cathedral of Santa María de la Asunción in Zapotlán El Grande (Jalisco, Mexico) was presented by Maria Guadalupe Contreras, from the Directorate for Environmental Planning Municipality of Tamazula, José de Jesús Sánchez Cárdenas from the College of Architects of the South of the State of Jalisco, Sandra Mojarro Magaña from the National Technological Institute and David Rojas Escarrega, Councillor of Region 3 of the international union of architects (UIA).

Finally, we had the pleasure to welcome Tania Maria Cano Espinosa, director of the Architecture program of Monterrey, closing the event with a presentation on the strengthening and progress of the new metropolitan model for construction waste management in Jalisco, Mexico.