The first Reuse Festival successfully completed

The festival was organised by Zelena akcija / FoE Croatia on World Environment Day as part of the Communities Go Circular project. The primary goal of this event was to raise public awareness of the importance of reuse to protect the environment and nature.

During the festival, several hundred people repaired electrical devices and bicycles for free, learned to sew on a sewing machine and patched clothes, exchanged clothes and shoes and made reusable food packaging. "We are overjoyed by such great interest! This shows that reuse is a practice that people love and cherish and want more of these activities that prevent waste and save money. Therefore, we are delighted that we have organised the first festival of this type, but by no means the last, so we are already thinking about ideas for next year", said Marko Košak from FoE Croatia.

The organisers would like to thank everyone who participated as well as those who registered but unfortunately did not manage to take part because of the limited places at the activities. "There will be more opportunities in our other activities that we planned for the rest of this year", Košak commented.

He especially thanked the Ribnjak Youth Center and the Maksimir Culture and Information Center for their warm hospitality and pleasant ambience, as well as the Humana Nova social cooperative for the materials provided for the two workshops.

Košak noted that the goal of organising this festival is to send a strong message to decision-makers about the need to develop and increase the availability of reuse systems. This system is chronically lacking in Croatia, while it is an integral part of circular economy activities in many EU countries. "We hope that in the near future we will have many more repair shops, reuse centres and exchange centres that will be initiated by the state, cities and municipalities, not only by associations and civic initiatives. We’ll continue to exert pressure in this direction", Košak concluded.

See the entire photo gallery HERE.

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The Reuse Festival was organised as part of the 'Communities go circular' project, financed by the EU fund CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme). The project aims to promote reuse in cities and municipalities in three EU countries - Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. The partners in the project are Zelena akcija (Zero Waste Croatia), Zelena Istra, Zero Waste Italy, KNOF, and Ekologi brez meja (Zero Waste Slovenia). The views and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for the expressed views. More about the project here: https://zelena-akcija.hr/hr/projekti/communities-go-circular