Valencian Region leads Sustainable City Awards 2015
The municipality of Mutxamel (Alicante) has won the National Sustainable City Awards 2015 and Benaguasil (Valencia) has been awarded in the category of water management.
These awards, which have attended this year 600 Spanish towns, are driven by Environmental Foundation Forum and supported by the Ministry of Environment and Ecoembes sponsorship, aimed giving “relevance and visibility” to the Spanish municipalities that drive the most sustainable policies. Minister of Agriculture, Food and Environment, Isabel García Tejerina, delivered yesterday in Madrid Sustainable City Award 2015 to the municipality of Mutxamel for its commitment to local sustainability policies and in the category of water management, Benaguasil was awarded for their efforts in promoting the efficiency and sustainability of the water cycle through the implementation of sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS).
Regarding water management and SUDs implementation, the municipality of Benaguasil has been strongly involved in Climate-KIC through professional mobility programme “Pioneers into Practice”. It has participated in its early beginning with its own technician and as host organization of these experts (pioneers). Benaguasil has taken the knowledge and the experience advantage of these professionals to develop and promote the SUDs in its municipality. This involvement with sustainability and internationalization made possible the professional placement of 7 pioneers of different profiles from across Europe. It has meant to promote and spread to other towns and countries the implementation of these systems, whose infrastructures have been visited, studied and optimized. Through SUDs, Benaguasil improved urban water cycle, reducing the flow of rainwater that go to municipal sewer system, reducing energy consumption and costs of purification of the rainwater, taking advantage of it for others uses such as gardening, street cleaning and fountains.
The minister said that through these municipalities efforts, “sustainable development becomes more real,” and thanked the finalists being “at the forefront for global environmental objectives.”
Likewise, García-Tejerina stressed that municipalities have most of the responsibility for combating global warming, and their policies and activities depend largely for achieving the recently adopted global agreement on climate change in Paris.
Other awards went to the Catalan town of Tiana in waste category, thanks to the optimization of waste recycling, the environmental education category went to the municipality of Noáin, Navarra, while energy efficiency one went to Sant Just Desvern, in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, for its plan of action for sustainable energy.
http://www.premiociudadsostenible.com/