The BALTIPLAST project challenges city residents to reduce their own plastics consumption

The first Plastics Challenge campaign took place in spring last year. The six-week campaign featured social media influencers Noora Shingler and Teemu “Roskapäivä-Eino” Oinio, who participated in the challenge, inspiring about 30 people from their Instagram followers. During the campaign, their social media accounts allowed people to participate in discussions about why and how to reduce plastics in their everyday lives, for example. Noora and Eino found the challenge an interesting and educational journey into the world of plastics. Among others, people in social media reflected on how difficult it can be to follow one’s own “plastics footprint”, especially if one often eats in restaurants. The discussion was interesting and educational, and Noora and Eino recommend everyone to challenge themselves in reducing plastics!

Watch the video where Noora and Eino share their experiences (YouTube video in Finnish)

In the challenge, the volunteer participants can use a form created in the project to monitor how much plastics litter they generate each week. To reduce the generation of plastics, households also receive various plastics reduction tips. While the form acts as a way to get ordinary consumers to delve deeper into the topic, its functionality as an incentive and tool was monitored.

The Plastics Challenge campaign has been implemented in all six countries where the project is active – Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Germany. The project also assesses the differences between countries in the use of plastics and the amount of waste. Through the accumulated experiences and lessons learned, the project can develop solutions for the more sustainable use of plastics in households. The tool can be found at baltiplast.check-ed.eu/fi and will be open for use by everyone at least until the end of 2025.

Employees of the City of Helsinki were challenged in the autumn campaign

The spring campaign left us with a lot of lessons on how we can influence in the project and how such an approach will help us all assess our own plastics consumption. More experiences were sought and a new method of implementation was tested in the second Plastics Challenge campaign in autumn last year, when BALTIPLAST challenged all employees in the City of Helsinki’s Urban Environment Division. Through intranet news, information screen ads, info sessions and the Kestävä Kymp event, the project raised awareness of the environmental and health impacts of plastics and encouraged employees in the division to take up the challenge. With colleagues involved, we were able to share information and talk with participants through the four-week challenge.

Outi Seppälä was one of the participants in the challenge and shared her thoughts on reducing plastics:

What made you join the Plastics Challenge?

The plastics challenge seemed really easy to join and would not take much time. Various environmental challenges appear in social media, for example, and usually give you some new ideas even if you do not make a big life change. You think about your own behaviour from a new perspective at least for a moment.

Did you manage to reduce plastics?

I may not have managed to reduce plastics by kilograms, but at least I thought about consuming plastics a lot during the challenge. Plastics also became part of various decisions in a store, for example, when so many other things have to be taken into account when making a purchase decision, such as price, healthiness, ethics, domestic origin, etc. It is sometimes difficult for the consumer to know whether the plastics-free option is the best overall after all, considering other factors. Is it better to buy a tote bag, for example, instead of a plastic bag just because there is no plastic in it? Hardly.

Reducing plastics may not always be the best option. Plastics is also likely to be associated with some greenwashing, e.g. in relation to biodegradability properties. On the other hand, some options are really easy to choose and thus reduce plastics, such as refill bags, unpacked vegetables, food packed in cardboard etc. Changes might require a little longer time and learning new routines. Fortunately, many traders are already involved and make it easier to make choices with better products.

In general, reducing the use of plastics may not have been as easy as I thought.

Which plastics products are hard to avoid?

Packaging plastics is almost impossible to avoid, unless you want to buy all the food at expensive markets and service counters, for example. In addition, plastic bags are unbeatable as garbage bags, for example. It seems that the key is to reduce consumption and the amount of waste in general, as then the amount of plastics will also decrease.

Share your best plastics reduction tip.

Instead of plastics ending up in recycling, I am more worried about plastics ending up in the environment. My tip is to borrow trash pickers, for example, from a local library and collect trash from your own neighbourhood. A concrete act for the environment and fresh air!

The author is Project Manager Kati Kauppi from the City of Helsinki’s Environmental Services.

Read more about the BALTIPLAST project: https://interreg-baltic.eu/project/baltiplast/