The European project ECO4VET started on the 1st of December 2013 with the aim of promoting training in eco-design among furniture companies.
The project kick-off meeting was held in the city of Tarragona (Spain) during the 3rd and 4th of December 2013 and it has been attended by participants from 7 different countries.
The Wood and Furniture Technology Centre of Catalonia leads the ECO4VET (Improvement of Vocational Education and Training related to EcoDesign and Sustainable Production in the Furniture Sector) project, funded by the European Commission within the Leonardo da Vinci program. The project aims at improving the competitiveness of European workers by acquiring new knowledge and skills in ecodesign and sustainable production.
Ecodesign focuses on developing products that reduce their environmental impact throughout their life cycle in areas such as:
- raw material selection and use
- manufacturing, packaging, transport and distribution, installation and maintenance
- use, recyclability and end-of-life.
and therefore, this issues have to be taken into consideration when designing a product.
The 10 partners of the consortium participated to the project kick-off meeting in order to plan the implementation of all the activities and work packages of the project, which will last 24 months.
ECO4VET will develop new tools and training materials, and pilot test courses will be held. The project includes work packages to analyse the sector training needs, taking into consideration the existing training courses in the different countries participating to the project, defining the training schedule and content of training courses, develop and adapt a training on -line platform and make several pilot courses in different countries.
The project targets are workers within furniture companies, students, unemployed people and training entities throughout Europe.
The meeting was attended by partners of the consortium from 7 countries (Turkey, Italy, Poland, Greece, Belgium, Romania and Spain).
