The Hanseatic city of Rostock and the Tunisian harbor city of Bizerte have established contact with each other in the year 2015 and have signed an official city partnership in 2017. The international community of practice Connective Cities supported both cities to frame their collaboration on the technical level.

The Hanseatic city of Rostock has successfully applied for hosting an international dialogue event on municipal waste management. In September 2016, 33 professionals from 14 cites in Egypt, Germany, France, Tunisia – amongst them Bizerte -, Morocco, Zimbabwe, Albania, Italy and Austria came together for an exchange of expertise in the Hanseatic city of Rostock.

In Rostock the city of Bizerte presented the current state of their waste management planning. The dialogue event was used by Bizerte and Rostock to identify the exact needs of Bizerte and to develop a project idea together with other international professionals of municipal waste management that will help to improve the waste management in Bizerte: The reduction of the amount of waste that needs to be processed with the introduction of sorting of green and bio waste and the installation of a composting plant.

The funding possibilities presented during the event led the city of Rostock to successfully apply for the funding of the small project fund by the Service Agency Communities in One World at Engagement Global. The six month funding has been and is currently being used to refine the project outline and to make it reach the implementation state. The common project consisting of the implementation of a waste sorting system and the establishment of composting in Bizerte is now to be carried out. In collaboration with its municipal company in charge of waste management, the Stadtentsorgung Rostock and the University of Rostock, the Hanseatic city of Rostock has applied for funding by the ‘Partnership Projects for Sustainable Local Development’ (Nakopa)  of the Service Agency Communities in One World in order to build a composting plant together with Bizerte in the Tunisian partner city.

In this example too, the methodical approach of Connective Cities has proved its value.