20.04.2017
The Keep the Archipelago Tidy Association and the Baltic Sea Challenge will organise a one-week ‘Shore Cleaning Wave’ campaign at the turn of April and May. The campaign aims to increase people’s knowledge on littering and to offer everyone the tangible chance to participate in water pollution control.
Several bodies have organised various garbage collection campaigns over the past years. This year, the Beach Clean-up Week campaign by the Keep the Archipelago Tidy Association and the Baltic Sea Challenge, coordinated by the cities of Helsinki and Turku, joined forces in a one-week Shore Cleaning Wave in order to reach record-breaking results for cleaner waterways.
The Shore Cleaning Wave sweeps from the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic Ocean
The Shore Cleaning Wave week starts on Saturday, 29 April with the Clean Shores events in Helsinki, Turku, and Tallinn, and ends in the spirit of the Beach Clean-up Week campaign in the Nordic Coastal Clean-up Day event on 6 May 2017, spreading the work all the way to Iceland.
The events allow people to participate in cleaning events, wonder at the horrors of lost-and-found garbage, receive instructions on recycling and waste sorting, as well as find out versatile information on the effects of littering on our waterways.
– For the third time, the Baltic Sea Challenge is organising shore cleaning events in several cities on the same day. By cooperating with the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities to challenge the Finnish municipalities to participate, we hope to activate many new municipalities! Municipal employees can organise their own events during the week, deliver garbage bags and trash grabbers to volunteer groups, or participate in the transportation of the garbage collected. Our cooperation is international, and this is already the 26th time that the event will be organised in Tallinn! Saint Petersburg will also participate in our cooperation by taking up the topic in a local event already on Saturday, 22 April, says the Helsinki Baltic Sea Challenge coordinator Lotta Ruokanen.
Residents help to achieve 100 clean shores
Even though the Shore Cleaning Wave only lasts one week, the Beach Clean-up Week campaign and the city’s spring cleaning period will last throughout the spring in Helsinki and Turku, for example.
Anyone, from individual people or groups of friends, hobby groups, and organisations can organise a shore cleaning event on any beach they want. We ask you to report your volunteer events on the Siistibiitsi website, where you can also print out a litter collection form and campaign materials. Reporting is important, as the data reported is used by the Keep the Archipelago Tidy Association to collect nation-wide information on the littering of the shores.
This year’s Beach Clean-up Week campaign, organised by the Keep the Archipelago Tidy Association for the fourth time, is a part of the Finland 100 anniversary year programme. During the past three events, the campaign has collected a total of 117,332 pieces of litter from 322 shores, with 3584 participants. This year, in the spirit of the Finland 100 jubilee year, we aim to involve one in every 1,000 Finns on a total of 100 shores.
– Nordic countries are among the top countries on many worldwide lists. Preserving our exotic Nordic nature and waterways through a common effort is therefore a natural way of neighbourly cooperation, and a good example of the power of cooperation, says project coordinator Jenny Gustafsson from the Keep the Archipelago Tidy Association..
Stay on top of the wave by following the Beach Clean-up Week page on Facebook (Rantojen siivousaalto).