“ZeroWaste PIX” – 2023 Photo Competition

The EEA organises a photo competition to raise awareness on an environmental theme and invites Europeans to share their takes on it. Every photograph will raise awareness and inspire change, whether it is an image of factories spewing toxins, overflowing landfills, or a community garden bringing people together around a shared sense of purpose.

Categories

• Four categories are open under the photo competition 2023:
  • Circular and Smart
    • The path towards sustainability begins with a reimagining of how to use the resources. Producers, large and small, are encouraged to adopt green technologies and production strategies that are built around reducing inputs and reusing outputs.
    • Show them how various suppliers are contributing to alleviating environmental pressures through their production lines. They would welcome, for example, photos of green innovations making use of leftovers and waste, such as upcycling plastic waste into fashionable shoes, return and refurbish programmes for customers, or the use of residual flows from the food industry to produce animal feed.
  • Eco- Lifestyles
    • While producers bear the ultimate responsibility for long-term change, consumers can play a role in alleviating some of the environmental burdens. This can be achieved through conscious choices and habits in the daily lives, being it at home, at work or at school.
    • They invite you to capture the habits in your lives that help minimize your daily consumption and generation of waste, such as reducing meat consumption, composting organic waste, embracing the second-hand market, buying local and organic products or producing your own electricity.
  • Wasteful Production
    • Wasteful production is the creation of goods and services that are not necessary to the well-being of society. This can occur when companies produce more than what is needed or when they produce goods that are designed to become obsolete quickly. It can also occur when the production process itself generates excessive waste.
    • Show them how EU industries contribute to this wasteful production with pictures of, for example, inefficient production lines (excessive use of water, energy, raw materials), disposal of toxic materials, or wastewater discharges.
  • Consumption Mania
    • Some of the consumer habits have a negative impact on the environment. Wasted food, fast-fashion, and regular use of single-use plastics are all examples that drive demand for an unsustainable system.
    • They would like to shed light on the negative impacts of the current consumption patterns and throwaway culture through pictures of, for example, large volume of waste, dumpsters full of unsold products or animals interacting with the discarded leftovers of human civilization.

Prize Information

• 4 X 1000 EUR Best photo in each category
• 500 EUR Public Choice award
• 500 EUR Youth Prize 18 – 24 years.

Eligibility Criteria

• The competition is open to the citizens of the EU 27 Member States, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Türkiye; under the stabilisation and association agreements: North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• The photos must be taken in the countries mentioned above.
• All participants must be 18 or older.
• You must have full copyrights to the submitted material.
• You may submit maximum 5 entries in the competition. Each entry will be handled separately so you need to fill out a new submission form for each entry.

Selection Process

• The best photographs in each category will be selected by a pre-selection committee consisting of communication and environment experts appointed by the EEA.
• Finalist photos will then be submitted to an external jury composed of environmental communication experts from across Europe. The jury will determine the winners of all prizes except for the Public Choice Award.
• For the Public Choice Award, the finalist entries put forward by the pre-selection committee will be open to a public vote from 24 October to 7 November 2023.
• The winners of all prizes will be announced on 10 November 2023.

For more information, visit EEA.