Europe annually produces about 1.3 billion tons of waste. Large part of it - about 150 million tons – is of biological nature and therefore potentially biodegradable. The topic "Biodegradable Waste" affects two other current as well as urgent topics: the global climatic change and the energy supply. Until today world-wide most of the organic waste still is deposited in an unordered and untreated way. As consequence large quantities of the climate relevant gas methane develop.  The potentials that lie in the field of biodegradable waste could in that context be used more efficiently for energy production in order to preserve other natural sources of energy.

Research and science have already worked on developing innovative solutions in recent years. The European environmental legislation has also contributed by setting up the “Landfill Directive”. Untreated organic wastes may thereafter no longer be only deposited. In order to communicate the complex topic including necessary and sustainable measures in all countries of the European Union, it is necessary to create an appropriate level of knowledge of all participants within the European waste sector. Information regarding biodegradable waste often is already available. However, there are no common training standards for this sector so far. The planned project BLES - Blended Learning Enivironmental Science aims at supporting innovation transfer within the European waste sector related to the treatment of biologically degradable waste materials by making use of a Blended Learning arrangement.

A consortium comprising 10 partners from Bulgaria, Germany, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta and Poland will co-operate to achieve this goal. It is intended to develop a multilingual and modular learning environment that is oriented towards practical work processes and procedures. The main objective is to offer the participants – employees from waste companies, waste producers as well as stuff of authorities and unemployed technicians - a European-wide and comparable qualification. The Blended-Learning-concept combines internet-based learning modules with the attendance of face-to-face meetings in the respective countries. Regarding content BLES will partly be based upon already existing projects and their results, particularly the projects European RecyOccupation Profile and "European Waste Sector Assistant - EUWAS".

BLES will mark a further step towards the harmonization of European vocational trainings concerning the selected topic. In the long run an appropriate qualification level will support the employees of the European waste sector in using the potentials of biodegradable waste for climatically adjusted treatment as well as an energy effective production. Since the project will make use of open-source technologies, the concept will technically and structurally be transferable to many other topics without cost-intensive programming or license purchases. Thus the project contributes in an ideal way to the further opening of vocational training systems in Europe and to make them more flexible.

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