BaltiPlast – Baltic Approaches to Handling Plastic Pollution under a Circular Economy Context

There has been a dramatic increase in plastic production and consumption in Europe to the extent that plastic waste pollutes water resources and risks human and environmental health, potentially harming the entire environmental ecosystem in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). Current levels of plastic recycling and reuse in the BSR are rather low. Collaboration is therefore needed between local governments and all concerned actors in the plastic waste value chain for knowledge distribution and promotion of best practices.

A project consortium of 18 partners from Germany, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will develop, test and deploy concrete solutions to the challenges of plastic pollution in an integrated manner at all relevant levels. The solutions will be tested by municipalities at the strategic decision-making and operational level, by public entities as part of their operations, by businesses that use or supply packed goods, produce, trade or manage plastic packaging and packaging waste, and by inhabitants who need to substantially change their single-use plastic consumption.

By the end of the project, the solutions and the educational kit will be available for replication to other local authorities, public service providers and interest groups at the BaltiPlast Plastic Waste Management Platform.

Partners

• Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (DE)
• City of Helsinki (FI)
• City of Tallinn (EE)
• Kaunas city municipality (LT)
• Västerås municipality (SE)
• Valmiera Municipality Government (LV)
• Stockholm Environment Institute, Tallinn Centre (EE)
• Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) (EE)
• Kaunas University of Technology (LT)
• Daugavpils City Municipality (LV)
• Union of the Baltic Cities Sustainable Cities Commission (FI)
• Baltic Environmental Forum Germany (DE)
• Baltic Environmental Forum Latvia (LV)
• Keep Sweden Tidy (SE)
• Swedish Consumers Association (SE)
• Environmental Center for Administration and Technology (ECAT) (LT)
• Coalition Clean Baltic (SE)
• Plastic-Free City, KuBus e.V. (DE)

Funding

This project is funded by the Interreg Baltic Sea Region 2021-2027 programme and co-funded by the European Union.