Kick-off Meeting

On Friday 12^th of September 2014, the Kick-off Meeting of the bilateral project W.I.S.E WEEE – Green Environmental Technology took place at Ateliera Fara Frontiere (AFF) in Bucharest, Romania. Two research scientists from SINTEF Materials and Chemistry in Norway, which is the project partner, participated in the meeting to draw up the project and to set up the work plan for the following 2 years.

The main objective of WISE WEEE – Green Environmental Technology, led and coordinated by AFF, is to strengthen the added local value of AFF's WEEE recycling activity.

AFF is a Romanian  Work Integration Social Enterprise (W.I.S.E) founded as an  NGO in 2008, that has been operating in Bucharest since 2009. The main goal of the AFF is to (re)integrate people living under undesirable social conditions into the job market and finally into a normal life. Such people are employed to carry out different economic activities. One of the activities is collecting, dismantling and refurbishing the WEEE (Waste of Electrical and Electronical Equipments), such as personal computers, printers, mobile phones and tv sets.

The SINTEF Group is the largest independent contract research organization in Scandinavia with more than 2000 employees, of which the SINTEF Foundation has approximately 1200. Fields of research are technology, natural science, medicine and social science. SINTEF Materials and Chemistry – a research division within the SINTEF Group – is heavily involved in, and puts strategic empasis on sustainable recycling and recovery of waste.

Through „W.I.S.E WEEE - Green Environmental Technology” project and with the help of the Norwegian partner SINTEF, AFF aims to raise the productivity and value of the recyling activities and at the same time facilitate  work integration of socially disadvantaged people. It will help AFF to increase the value from the WEEE scraps they dismantle and to employ more socially disadvantaged people, which will give them better employment perspectives after the period in the workshop. The project furthermore contributes to the improvement of the recycling chain in Romania, preventing the export of valuable scraps abroad, as they can be treated locally by a proper process targeting the critical raw materials as specified by the EU directives.

The project is financed through the Norwegian Financial Mechanism (Norway Grants), contributing to reduce economic and social disparities and to strengthening bilateral relations between Romania and Norway.

Inspection of collected electrical and electronic scrap during the kick-off meeting at the workshop of Ateliera Fara Frontier by SINTEF researchers. (From left to right: Senior Scientist Dr. Martin Bellmann from SINTEF, Director of Ateliera Fara Frontiere Patrick Ouriaghli and Research Scientist Dr. Arjan Ciftja from SINTEF).