Last week CEYOU hosted the first online meeting for the Youth branch of Pontypridd Young Friends of the Earth.

The group have been very active over the past year attending Fridays for Future School Strikes and organising a hustings for local parliamentary candidates to discuss their views and policies relating to Climate Change.

Everyday life has changed significantly in a short space of time. Supermarket restrictions and limiting our time out of the house may lead to an increase in purchasing products wrapped in plastic and relying on takeaways in plastic tubs, combine this with reduced waste management and recycling services and its easy to fall into bad habits.

Their task for our Youth Forum this week was to come up with a top ten tips for staying green during the Covid19 quarantine and lockdown period.

The group were full of ideas for the lockdown from planning your ideal garden in Minecraft to redecorating your home for a change of scenery to leaving chalk messages of hope and positivity on the pavements.

Here are the top 10 which, in true Circular Economy style you are free to use, reuse and repurpose but please give attribution to CEYOU.eu and YoungFOEPontypridd.

Despite the Coronavirus emergency, the Hackathon will go ahead and starts on the web on Monday 23 March.

Two successive dates will follow, always via web, where European technicians and Italian realities will intervene in the field of circular economy.

Numerous young people who have joined the initiative eager to contribute to activate projects aimed at reducing waste, food waste and improving the extension of the life span of goods. During a difficult and extremely delicate time young people are always in the front row for taking care of the planet.

The hometown of our coordinators, Pontypridd, made international news this week as Storm Dennis hit, bursting the banks of the river Taff and devastating homes and businesses.

Many items were thrown straight into skips for fear of contamination with sewerage water but it was good to see representatives from the local repair cafe salvaging some of the harder to recycle items, electrical cables and sockets made of mixed materials to be disinfected, dried out and hopefully reused.

The CEYOU project will challenge youth in San Giuseppe Vesuviano, Italy, to get creative and engage with circular economy during an innovative hackathon. Participants, who include associations, informal groups and individuals between 18 and 30 years old, will have two days to jointly develop ideas, activities and workshops to foster circular economy in four municipalities (Palma Campania, San Gennaro Vesuviano, San Giuseppe Vesuviano and Striano), covering three key sectors: food waste reduction, waste prevention and product life extension.

The hackathon will take place on 9 March and 3 April 2020. It is organised by UCSA as part of a series of activities of the CEYOU project to foster youth participation and engagement with circular economy. The innovative circular economy services created by the hackathon’s participants will be implemented in a second stage in the targeted territories either by UCSA directly or by a third party.

For more information and registration for the hackathon, please visit the following page (in Italian): https://ucsa.eu

The whole Ceyou partnership met face to face for the first time in Athens in January 2020. During the two day meeting they consolidated plans for local youth forums where young people could engage in a dialogue around circular economy and environmental issues with policy makers, business owners and other relevant actors. Over the coming months there will be a series of hackathons, webinars, workshops, round-table events and more.