Household Participation in Waste Management

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The project focuses on the management of the Baltic Sea environment, prepares for and implements small-scale pilot projects of modern Waste Management (WM) and pays particular attention to environmental hotspots in coastal areas. The programme area (PA) exhibits a major and unsustainable imbalance when applying the WM “hierarchy” (see 2.1). For example in Poland some 95% of waste goes to landfill with considerable negative environmental impacts as a result, whereas only 3% of the waste in Scandinavia goes to landfills. The entire programme area falls under the EU directives that state that waste volumes should be stabilised by 2012 and decline after 2020. Organic waste has great negative environmental impacts as disposal but if sorted and processed both is a sustainable and cost efficient source of energy. In the BSR and the PA there is a lack of 1) Joint cross-border cooperation structures to enhance local preparedness and response 2) Thoroughly disseminated good practices 3) Actions for cross-border Capacity- and Competence building 4) Institutional platforms reducing the above-mentioned imbalance in system approach 5) Joint actions to create sustainable development conditions. The overall objective of the project is to seize the potential of organic waste as a source of sustainable energy. To reach that objective there is an urgent need to transfer the knowledge from areas of modern WM systems to environmental hot spots in the PA. Guided by EU Directives and the waste hierarchy the partners will jointly build strategies and action plans on improving WM and biogas production in the PA. The project will disseminate modern household WM to raise awareness of the hierarchy by targeting households via municipalities. The expected result is that the knowledge transfer and joint development in this project becomes best practice and have long term effects in the whole SB area. The success factor of improving the WM situation relies on capacity building and knowledge transfer to change attitudes in the two target groups, households and municipalities. The project aims to ensure that the project results have a catalytic effect that integrates the PA, bridges exchange and know-how and harmonises WM. To achieve the objective the project defines the following actions; 1) Transfer and Development of Knowledge 2) Waste Management connected to Energy and 3) Jointly developed Pilot Projects. The organisation South Baltic Sustainable Waste Management Association, covering the entire PA, will be set up to ensure the durable project results. The potential positive impact from this project will be found in: A) Increased household sorting B) less waste produced C) Increased production of biogas D) reduction of landfills with corresponding decrease in methane leakage and E) environmental mitigation of the ground water and the Baltic Sea. The motto is: save the planet – earn money

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