The magazine Actualidad Económica (Economic Activity Magazine), the economic supplement of El Mundo newspaper, has awarded the CirculArt Competition (or The CirculArt National Plastic Arts Competition) as one of the “100 best ideas of the year”, in the sustainability category. For the past 44 editions, these awards recognise the most brilliant, useful and innovative products and services up and running in our country in the previous year.
CirculArt is a plastic arts and photography competition, set up in 2021 by the European Recycling Platform Spain, with the collaboration of Amiab Group, with the objective of demonstrating the impact of waste in our society, as seen through art. With a view on the fostering the circular economy, more than a hundred Spanish artists presented their sculptures, paintings, collages, photographs and artistic interventions, always under the approach to sustainability. The 12 winning works and a further thirty selected works were on display in a physical exhibition held in Madrid at the end of October, followed by a virtual exhibition accessible online until 31 December.
“We wanted to get actively involved in the much-needed area of raising awareness about the waste we generate and to inspire the necessary changes in society, something for which the arts are the best way. CirculArt was set up with the desire to become a space of reference for making visible and awakening, from the plastic arts, a transformative vision of society, which fosters a new model in line with the circular economy”, explains Laura Alonso from ERP Spain.
“We are proud that this initiative, in which we poured so much effort and enthusiasm into, has deserved the attention and recognition of such consolidated and prestigious awards as the ‘100 best ideas’. But, most importantly, we hope that this mention will contribute to raise awareness as a society and make visible the importance of the circular economy, prevention, reuse, selective collection and recycling of our waste”, adds Alonso.
About European Recycling Platform (ERP)
European Recycling Platform was founded in 2002 in response to the introduction of the European Union’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive. Created by producers for producers, its mission is to ensure high quality and efficient implementation of the Directive, for the benefit of its member companies and the environment. In June 2014, ERP became part of the Landbell Group, an international supplier of consultancy services and environmental and chemical compliance solutions, which operates SCRAP in 16 countries, in the field of WEEE, waste batteries and accumulators (WB&A) and packaging. ERP and the Landbell Group have separately collected more than 6 million tonnes of packaging waste, more than 4 million tonnes of WEEE and more than 90,000 tonnes of waste portable batteries.
In Spain, ERP is the only SCRAP (extended producer responsibility collective scheme) for waste electrical and electronic equipment, batteries and accumulators, with a pan-European presence operating in our country. In WEEE, since 2005, with the transposition of the first WEEE Directive into Spanish law, and in EPR since 2008. The SCRAPs are non-profit organisations, set up in Spain by manufacturers and importers of electrical and electronic equipment and batteries, whose objective is to ensure the correct management of these types of products when they become waste.
