Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Weeks

Session title: Humanitarian Packaging Waste: How the Joint Initiative supports more sustainable practices

20 Apr 23 15:00-15:45 UTC+2

SessionAbstract

Packaging is essential for making sure life-saving assistance reaches those who need it, but it also creates vast amounts of waste that are difficult to manage. Shifting how the humanitarian sector manages its packaging waste towards greater sustainability is too huge a task for any single organization.
For this reason, the partners of the Joint Initiative for Sustainable Humanitarian Assistance Packaging Waste Management (“The JI”) are working together to make the humanitarian community’s packaging waste management more environmentally and socially responsible, through collaboration, pooling resources, and sharing knowledge and good practices.
The JI is a USAID funded partner-driven initiative of 22 humanitarian organizations. The mission of the Initiative is to reduce the environmental footprint of humanitarian action, looking holistically, both upstream and downstream, at plastic packaging waste. This session will provide a brief overview of the Joint Initiative, our partners, a look at the Joint Initiative’s work plan, highlights of new and ongoing activities, as well as information on how to connect with us.

Agenda

1. What is the Joint Initiative for Sustainable Humanitarian Packaging Waste

2. Baseline assessment on Humanitarian Packaging Waste: how much packaging waste humanitarian organisations generate

3. Guidance on secondary use of packaging

4. Compendium of best practices - what humanitarian organisations are doing to reduce their packaging?

5. Communication & learning from experiences (Webinar series: Packaging Matters)

Speakers

Amro Elzoubi- Joint Initiative

Amro is an Environmental Engineer who graduated from Politecnico di Milano in Italy and specializes in chemicals and waste management. He is supporting the activities led by the World Food Programme under the USAID-funded Joint Initiative for Sustainable Humanitarian Assistance Packaging Waste Management. Before that, Amro supported several UN agencies in Jordan, Italy, and the USA concerning waste management, sustainable humanitarian procurement, resilient environments, and renewable energy.

Samantha Brangeon- Joint Initiative

Samantha is now an independent consultant supporting humanitarian organisations to better understand and reduce their environmental and carbon footprints. She joined the team of the USAID-funded JI. Her specific tasks include mapping recycling infrastructures in humanitarian contexts, compiling case studies capturing best practices from the humanitarian sector on packaging sustainability and developing tools and guidance to help humanitarian organisations green their packaging and procurement practices.

Gabriela Flores is a sustainability communications professional with 20+ years of experience in think tanks, NGOs and international financial institutions working in Africa, Latin America, the UK and Europe. Gabriela supports initiatives aiming to green humanitarian action, including through a shift to renewable energy and the uptake of more sustainable practices. She is currently the communications lead at the Joint Initiative on Sustainable Humanitarian Assistance Packaging Waste Management.