Plastic pollution has long been a persistent pressure on the Baltic Sea, driven largely by everyday single-use plastics originating on land and compounded by uneven implementation of existing policies at local level. Municipalities, despite their central role in public services, procurement, events, and waste management, have often lacked practical tools to translate circular economy ambitions into action. 

The BALTIPLAST project was launched in 2023 to address this gap. Bringing together municipalities, researchers, NGOs, and environmental specialists from across the Baltic Sea Region, the project set out to turn plastic reduction from abstract goals into a concrete, locally applicable practice. Its core premise was simple: meaningful plastic prevention requires coordinated action across strategy, daily organisational behaviour, and waste management systems. 

Working closely with eight municipalities, BALTIPLAST co-developed and tested strategic frameworks focused on prevention, reuse, and recycling. These were complemented by soft solutions targeting plastic consumption at source, most notably the Plastic Inventory Tool, which enabled organisations, schools, businesses, and households to make plastic use visible and act on measurable facts rather than assumptions. Technical pilots in three countries further demonstrated how improved collection and sorting could support higher-quality recycling and circular end-uses. 

The project’s impacts were validated through an environmental assessment, which showed that prevention-oriented measures and reuse systems can deliver measurable reductions in both plastic leakage and greenhouse gas emissions. Beyond pilots, BALTIPLAST invested heavily in capacity building, training local actors and embedding knowledge within municipal ecosystems. 

By the end of the project, BALTIPLAST had delivered a coherent set of tested, transferable solutions supported by a digital platform and educational kit for local authorities. Together, these outcomes demonstrate that plastic reduction is achievable without compromising service quality and that municipalities can play a decisive role in preventing plastic pollution when equipped with the right tools, knowledge, and collaborative frameworks.