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Regional Collaboration for Minimising Pesticide Emissions in the Environment (CleanRegion)
Start date: Jan 31, 2005, End date: Dec 30, 2007 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The participating research institutes are strongly involved in the European Weed Research Society (EWRS) and have a long and extensive expertise on non-chemical methods of weed control.By linking these research institutions with the public authorities, CleanRegion supports the involved municipalities and cities in (1) developing alternative strategies for weed control, (2) developing improved policies on pesticide use and, (3) improving technologies for preventing point-source pollution with pesticides. Achievements: Weed occurrence on pavements has been surveyed in 7 cities in 2005 and 2006: Cesis (LVA), Braunschweig (DEU), Malmö (SWE), Næstved (DNK), Helsinki (FIN), Wageningen (NLD) and R.L. Spa (GBR). Different weeding strategies, mainly based on non-chemical methods, have been undertaken in 5 countries (Finland, Sweden, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands). Both activities have been conducted according to common protocols shared among the partners. The results have been planned, analysed and discussed at five meetings in total: Flakkebjerg (DNK), 30-31 Mar. 05; Braunschweig (DEU), 6 Dec. 05; Wageningen (NLD), 26-27 Apr. 06; Cesis (LVA), 7th Dec. 06; Gartwick (GBR) 26-27 Apr. 07. A one-day excursion was held on each of the meetings in Flakkebjerg, Wageningen and Gatwick to see various issues related to weed control on hard surfaces. All the results achieved were finally presented and discussed at an International conference in Copenhagen on 25 October 2007. The work on ‘Improvement of technologies for preventing point-source pollution with pesticides’ (component 4) has been carried out according to the plan. Full scale system for cleaning of pesticide waste water has been tested for 20 different pesticides. Different kinds of compost, garden compost, urban compost and straw have been tested to identify which composition degraded an insecticide most quickly. The final results are now available on the project's homepage (www.cleanregion.dk), and the results were discussed at a conference in Belgium 11-12 December 2007. Two researchers meetings have been held: 21 Dec 2005 and 2 Jun 2006. Discussions on policies on pesticide use by local and regional authorities (component 3) was started at the first meeting in Flakkbjerg March 2005 and ended with an open conference on the 25th April 2006 at Wageningen University. The conference attracted 61 people and all the presentations can be downloaded from the website. A proceeding has been produced, published and disseminated to the attendees of the conference including other stakeholders. In addition, several partners have prepared a joint paper on pesticide policies, which has been accepted for Weed Research and is scheduled to appear in issue 2, 2008. This work has been going on during several months in the post-conference period. In total 4 steering committee meetings (Flakkebjerg 05, Braunschweig 05, Wageningen 06, Gatwick 07) have been held to discuss administrative matters.
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  • 45.1%   580 164,65
  • 2000 - 2006 Interreg IIIC North
  • Project on KEEP Platform
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19 Partners Participants