🔜 Plastic Waste Management FORUM

🗓 May 26-28, 2025

📍 Joxe Mari Korta Zentroa, San Sebastian (Spain)

Thought and organized by Prof. Steven De Meester, Prof. Kim Ragaert and dr. Haritz Sardon, the event is an open forum related with Plastic Waste Management that will be celebrated between the 26 and the 28 of May 2025 in San Sebastian, Spain.

Considering the urgency towards the need to develop solutions to the plastic emergency, we believe that to gather some of the leaders in a comfortable environment offers incredible opportunities to align in the complex and urgent problem of plastic waste management.

Concept and aim

We have a dual focus. On the one hand to foster the academic/industrial interaction/collaboration between the different key players involved in the meeting and on the other hand, to discuss some main topic that were defined in the event conception and preparation, such as:

a) Is there a need to develop new plastics that are more circular or we should try to focus the efforts in giving solution to current plastics?
b) Is the scientific community working on the most important real problems? If no how we could solve it?
c) Should we better include social sustainability in circular economy rese- arch? If yes which aspects and how?
d) Can recycling approaches be the same in developed and non-develo- ped countries? How to link technical research to the country context?

The event features both academic and industrial reaserchers, as well as policy makers which are willing to transform the current linear plastic production into a more circular plastic production as we believe that

Collaboration is essential to solve the plastic waste issue, and we believe that your expertise is unique and can help to speed up the development of real solutions in the plastic waste area.

We are therefore very excited to welcome our guest in the beautiful San Sebastian in 2025 for this event and share ideas and plans!

Participants

Michael Shaver / Manchester University, UK

Markus Antonietti / Max Planck Institute, Germany

Catharina Bening / ETH, Switzerland

Katrina Knauer / NREL, USA

Bernhard Von Vacano / BASF, Germany

Bosman Werner / EU Commision

Karolis Vilcinskas / Reckitt, UK

Maria Soliman / SABIC, Netherlands

ORGANIZERS

Steven De Meester / Ghent University, Belgium

Kim Ragaert / Maastricht University, Netherlands

Haritz Sardon / POLYMAT, University of the Basque Country, Spain

Program

Full program will be available soon!

For the moment, be aware that the event will begin on the 26th at 14:00 (after lunch, local time) and will end on the 28th at 14:00 (after lunch, local time). Although we managed to include two coffee breaks and lunch each day, we are not able to offer support for traveling and accommodation.