R4R (Regions for Recycling) aims at promoting regional contributions to the European Recycling Society, by allowing local and regional authorities to make consistent comparisons thanks to a common method and exchange of transferable good practices related to local instruments in order to improve recycling performances.The European Waste Policy aims at preventing waste generation and optimising the use of waste as resources, in order to move towards a European Recycling Society. Regional and local authorities are key actors that concretely implement this concept: many legal, economic and educational instruments are to be decided at this decentralized level. Yet these local authorities face many new challenges with waste management: while generated quantities are continuously increasing, they must comply with stricter legislation and set more complex waste management systems encouraging more active involvement of the population.Therefore, it is relevant for these local authorities toshare good practices and develop benchmarks between them. In 2010, ACR+ created with its members the European decentralised Observatory of municipal waste recycling performances, where local authorities can compare their performances through the use of common concepts and indicators. The R4R project will capitalize on these first efforts towards a better knowledge and monitoring of performances and completes it by identifying conditions and instruments that allowed achieving high performances for waste recycling based on sound comparisons of local data. Its main objectives are to optimize data collection and benchmark on recycling performances as well as to link them with legal, economic, educational, technical and organisational waste management tools allowing high recycling performances. Economics instruments improving recycling performances such as pay as you throw systems, tax on disposal, incentives and extended producer responsibility schemes will be especially analysed.To expand the dissemination of the project and the collection and exchange of data, an online tool will be set up and free to use for European local and regional authorities. It will allow users to input data, assess recycling performances and have access to benchmarking and good practices related to their context. Several training sessions and EU conferences are planned to improve the participation of European territories.Project Partners have been selected among public entities involved in waste management, monitoring or planning, presenting a variety of experienced and less experienced territories. To ensure that every partner is actively involved whatever its experience in waste management is, each less experienced partner will be assisted by an advanced one through peer review process throughout the project.Each partner will set an implementation plan stating how outcomes will be used, either by transfering identified good practices or by promoting efficient local instruments. Achievements: After the final approval of the project "Regions for Recycling", the lead partner together with the project partners started to think about the launch event and the kick-off meeting. After several discussions, it finally took place on April 18th-20th and were divided into several key moments. On the first day, the launch conference aimed at presenting the project to local, regional and national stakeholders and to the media. The event started with a press conference, gathering 13 journalists, both from local and national media which led to a widespread media coverage. On the afternoon, the launch conference targeted the waste management stakeholders, the official representatives of the local and national institutions, and of course the partners of the project : 86 persons attended the conference. The following two days were dedicated to internal meetings gathering all project partners. It was the opportunity to browse several topics : overall organisation and repartition of tasks within each component, organisation between biannual meetings; first steps of the project; discussions on internal coordination. Two specific sessions have been led : communication and dissemination of the project and financial management. The first expert group let the partners present their own territory and specificities regarding waste management and recycling. Discussions started around the common working framework , such as the scope of municipal waste, the issues relevant to partners interests and how data comparison can lead to improve local recycling performances. Based on thoses first exchanges, component 3 leader drafted a reporting table that has to be completed by all partners. Later on June, all partners were invited to start thinking about a set of external factors and report their ideas to CL3. This first meeting also gave the opportunity to the partner to visit a sorting centre in Paris, giving a concrete example of how recyclable waste is managed in a very dense urban area. This has also allowed to provide a more concrete approach and practical illustrations to the discussions led by the Expert Group.