Project organisations

The Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation is a creator of public opinion that promotes recycling and combats litter through public awareness campaigns, awards and environmental education. The Foundation strives to influence people's attitudes and behaviour in order to encourage a sustainable development.

Keep the Archipelago Tidy is a nationwide non-profit organisation active in environment protection in many fields: waste collection, recycling, information and education. The organisation started as an initiative of individual people in the archipelago area and has later spread to the coastal areas and the Finnish lake district.

Keep the Archipelago Tidy Association is best known for its nearly 200 Rubbish Seal waste recycling bins in different parts of Finland. In addition, the organization has approximately 200 earth closets dry toilets and about 30 pumpout stations.

In addition to these established services, the organisation has also started special local projects, which all contribute to creating a better future for water environments. Besides the concrete work, association is also active in environmental education.

Good connections to environmental authorities and other relevant stakeholders give us opportunities to get involved in important water-related environmental discussions and decision-making processes.

Finnish Environment Institute, SYKE, is both a research institute, and a centre for environmental expertise. SYKE forms part of Finland's national environmental administration, and operates under the auspices of the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

SYKE has long-term expert experience in various studies on marine environment including benthic and pelagic food webs and hazardous substances in the sea. Together with the Ministry of environment, SYKE Marine center has undertaken the task for designing the implementation of Marine Strategy Framework Directive in Finland, and also presently developing the national monitoring of marine litter and management of marine litter issues, including microlitter. SYKE Marine Research Center (Outi Setälä and Maiju Lehtiniemi) have active on-going collaboration on different marine litter issues with researchers from other Baltic countries, and are actively collaborating with HELCOM; Marine Litter Regional Action Plan and the development of indicators. They have on-going research especially distribution of microlitter in the sea and sewage systems, and the impacts of microlitter on marine life both in plankton and pelagic environment

Founded jointly by the Swedish government and the Swedish business sector in 1966, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute is Sweden’s first and oldest environmental research institute. We work with applied research and on commission to promote ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable growth within business and society at large.

Our research is funded partly by the Swedish government and the Swedish business sector, and partly through appropriations granted by national research bodies, research foundations, and the EU.

The City Government’s Environment Department is responsible for all aspects of waste management, such as waste collection and transport, developing and handling waste recycling systems (including a network of waste stations and composting sites), and construction, closure and aftercare of the landfills used by the city. About others tasks it is possible to find information here: www.tallinn.ee/eng/Environment-Department

The Environment Department of Tallinn has been involved in several INTERREG IV projects related to environmental protection and sustainable development:
- IUWMM, concerned with optimising integrated urban waste management,
- BECOSI, a project with the objective to map sites contaminated with hazardous substances,
- Regions for recycling (R4R). The R4R project brought together 13 partners wishing to share and discuss
their experience about municipal waste recycling. European local and regional territories share the same framework and objectives, yet they have designed different waste management systems leading to different performances, which makes comparisons very useful.

Turku is the main city in south-western coast of Finland with a population of 186 000. River Aura is central to the city and in the summer time the river banks make a living room for both the city dwellers and tourists. The archipelago outside of the city is also one of the main attractions.

Turku has been a pioneer in many environmental questions, waste management being one of them. In 2007 the cities of Helsinki and Turku committed to concrete voluntary action for the coastal waters and the entire Baltic Sea. This commitment resulted in the Baltic Sea Challenge. Other actors were invited to join the initiative and now there are more than 230 actors from Finland and other Baltic Sea states in the network. These include municipalities, companies, associations, educational institutions, regional actors, and state institutions. This network will bring benefits also for BLASTIC.

In the initiative ‘Clean Turku’ the city and its stakeholders strive to make the city, the river and the beaches cleaner and more attractive by finding new ideas and organizing voluntary work.

Stockholm Environment Institute - SEI is an independent international research institute, which has been engaged in environment and development issues at local, national, regional and global policy levels for 25 years. SEI was formally founded in 1989 by the Swedish Government and has established a reputation for rigorous and objective scientific analysis in the field of environment and development. Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn Centre (SEI Tallinn) was founded in 1992. It is an independent, non-profit foundation with staff around 20 people.

SEI Tallinn associate leading environmental experts from Estonia and is recognized as a key national expert on environment, climate change and energy, sustainable development and policy issues in the society.
The Tallinn centre links SEI world-wide know-how on the promotion of sustainable development and resilience, climate change mitigation and adaptation, environmental protection, nature conservation by analysing the impact of environment-related policies, management practices, market-based instruments, socio-economic issues, renewable energy sources promotion (wider up-take), energy efficiency measures and environmental governance studies in the region. In its commitment to bridging the gap between science and policy-making, SEI Tallinn is communicating its work to governments, the private sector, other research institutes, and the society as a whole. An important part of SEI Tallinn’s work focuses on analyzing impacts of national and EU policies and thus contributing to policy and legislation design.

The Foundation for Environmental Education Latvia (FEE Latvia) is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation promoting sustainable development through environmental education. The main activities of FEE Latvia are related to program implementation of Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE International) on a national level.

Membership of FEE International provides both the exclusive rights to carry out its international programsa and activities, as well as imposes strict administrative and quality criteria for FEE Latvia.

Fee Latvia has ensured the activity and development of all FEE International programs in Latvia since 1998 - Eco-Schools, Blue Flag, Eco-Schools, Young Reporters for the Environment (YRE), Learning about Forests (LEAF) and Green Key. Each one of them ranks between the most visible public initiatives in their fields in Latvia.

FEE Latvia has also developed and continues to implement a variety of environmental education projects and activities on a national level in close cooperation with other environmental organisations and institutions, thus promoting interdisciplinary cooperation for sustainable development.