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Innovative societies Water-smart societies Climate-neutral societies 

Interreg makes
a difference!

Explore how people in the Baltic Sea region have been benefitting
from our projects.

#MadeWithInterreg solutions for

Cleaner waters

Cleaner waters thanks to viable monitoring system, new methods for removing micropollutants from wastewater and sharing knowledge

What are we doing?

Coordinated actions are the key to cleaning Baltic Sea waters efficiently. Interreg projects that bring people together across sectors and countries stand behind many of them. Not only do they introduce new systemic methods to clean wastewater, but also ensure the spread of knowledge of those methods in the region. Trust in project recommendations directly translates into new policies and investments. In a long run, cooperation in projects exceeds original partnerships and builds grounds for new initiatives and actions to respond to arising challenges.

Examples of #MadeWithInterreg solutions:
  • a platform collecting best practices in smart water operations
  • a risk assessment system to monitor concentrations of micropollutants
  • novel methods to clean wastewater from micropollutants, e.g. pharmaceuticals
  • new technologies to reduce phosphorus losses
  • enhanced water treatment to improve water quality in lakes

 

What we’ve achieved so far? 

The Baltic Sea is one of the most heavily eutrophicated seas in the world. Interreg projects helped improve wastewater treatment, which is one of the factors influencing eutrophication. At the beginning of the 2000s, more than 20 cities collected best practices in water management and shared them with other city administrations around the Baltic Sea region. In 2009-2013, projects showcased that it was possible to reduce discharges of nutrients from wastewater treatment facilities to the level set in the Baltic Sea Action Plan of HELCOM. The HELCOM Action Plan targets were stricter than the EU requirement.

In 2016-2021, projects in cities and villages focused on improving the treatment of wastewater from residents and industries. Partners in projects tested new technologies that increased nutrient removal and reduced energy consumption in cities such as Daugavpils, Gdańsk, Tartu, Jūrmala, Kaunas, and Grevesmühlen. Rural municipalities benefitted from solutions like septic tanks and soil infiltration in Kolgaküla, Gennarby, Ainaži, and Leitgiriai. In other projects, partners tested the pre-treatment of wastewater at poultry, meat, and dairy factories in Leszno, Doruchów, Põltsamaa, and Jelgava. Following this joint work, the partners synthesised more than a hundred examples of smart water operations. Using this knowledge, they helped develop the new Baltic Sea Regional Nutrient Recycling Strategy of HELCOM, and revise the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan. These two strategic documents help achieve a healthy state of the Baltic Sea.

 

Ongoing projects

The ongoing projects explore new methods to clean wastewater more efficiently and better monitor concentrations of harmful substances and micropollutants in water environments. They address various stages of water management, starting from pollution prevention at its source, extending to robust monitoring and risk assessment practices, and culminating in the adoption of advanced wastewater treatment technologies. The projects aim to influence policy-making processes and implement practical measures for long-term improvements.

 

Supporting the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region 

Our projects play a vital role in achieving the ambitious goals of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) to save the Baltic Sea. In collaboration with the coordinators of the EUSBSR policy areas Nutri, Bioeconomy, Hazards, and Tourism, our projects make water and wastewater management more efficient and less resource-intensive in cities, rural areas, and tourist destinations. Together, our projects and the EUSBSR coordinators drive changes in water-related policies in our region, ensuring that the outcomes of our projects are integrated into legislation and continue to contribute to clearer, cleaner waters in the region.

 

Explore project solutions in more detail:

EMPEREST

Eliminating Micro-Pollutants from Effluents for REuse STrategies
The project EMPEREST tests advanced treatment technology that helps water utilities and companies better remove organic micropollutants such as PFAS or pharmaceuticals from wastewater.
Read more about the project

APRIORA

Improved risk assessment for strategic water management to reduce micro-pollutant emissions in the Baltic Sea Region
In the project APRIORA, environmental protection agencies and wastewater treatment plants get equipped with a GIS-based risk assessment system to monitor and model concentrations of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in order to improve water management and reduce emissions.
Read more about the project

BEACON

Application of biological effects methods in monitoring and assessment of contaminants in the Baltic Sea
In the project BEACON, public authorities and governmental organisations develop harmonised methods to assess contamination in the Baltic Sea waters, sediment and biota.
Read more about the project

AdvIQwater

Improving quality of BSR waters by advanced treatment processes
The project AdvIQwater tests photocatalysis, fungal treatment and biofilms methods to efficiently clean wastewaters from pharmaceuticals.
Read more about the project

NonHazCity 3

Reducing hazardous substances in construction to safeguard the aquatic environment, protect human health and achieve more sustainable buildings
The project NonHazCity 3 helps municipalities, entrepreneurs and individuals construct and renovate buildings with tox-free materials in order to protect health and the environment.
Read more about the project

TRUST ALUM

Building trust in target groups for ALUM treatment - an effective, yet misunderstood method for water quality improvement
The project TRUST ALUM helps public authorities in the Baltic countries make better use of ALUM water treatment and improve water quality in lakes.
Read more about the project

MUNIMAP

Baltic Sea Munitions Remediation Roadmap
The project MUNIMAP develops a legal and administrative framework for public authorities to initiate joint remediation of dumped munitions from the Baltic Sea and Skagerrak, which pose threats to the marine ecosystem and hinder the maritime economy.
Read more about the project

DAIMON 2

Decision Aid for Marine Munitions - Practical Application
The project DAIMON2 optimised the tools that allow maritime and environmental authorities to more accurately and less costly make decisions on the management of the dumped munitions.
Read more about the project

Land-Sea-Act

Accommodating of land-sea interactions into maritime and coastal planning in the Baltic Sea Region through blue-green infrastructure and ecosystem services
Land-Sea-Interaction and Ecosystem-Based-Approach are concepts that consider the human impact on coastal areas and strive for integrating aspects of sustainability and resource efficiency when it comes to maritime spatial planning. The project aims at improving the understanding and embedding the principles of Land-Sea-Interaction and Ecosystem-Based-Approach within the maritime and land-based spatial planning in order to contribute to cohesive management of the coastal areas.
Read more about the project

FanpLESStic-sea

FanpLESStic-sea – Initiatiatives to remove microplastics before they enter the sea
The project FanpLESStic-sea developed new tools to stop microplastics from entering the sea.
Read more about the project

BaMuR

Baltic Museum Resilience: Resilient museums and memory institutions for resilient societies in the Baltic Sea Region
The project BaMuR equips public authorities, NGOs and SMEs with a toolbox to help cultural and heritage institutions maintain their consolation role to people in times of crisis.
Read more about the project

R-Mode Baltic

Ranging Mode for the Baltic Sea
The Interreg project R-Mode Baltic launched a technical system for a safer ship navigation, and placed the Baltic Sea as a first operational navigation test area for maritime terrestrial navigation on the global map.
Read more about the project

DIGINNO

Digital Innovation Network
Through faster and more efficient uptake of digital solutions in public and private sectors, the project DIGINNO helped to accelerate the Baltic Sea region’s transition to a single digital market.
Read more about the project

DEAHL BALTIC

Digital Empowerment for Active Healthy Living in the Baltic Region
The project DEAHL BALTIC equips healthcare professionals and organisations with digital health literacy skills to ensure equal access to e-health services and improve healthcare delivery for people.
Read more about the project

EmPaci

Empowering Participatory Budgeting in the Baltic Sea Region
EmPaci allowed citizens to take part in the public budget planning and bring the most needed projects to reality.
Read more about the project

BOWE2X

BOWE2X
The Baltic Sea has great potential to contribute to the EU’s renewable energy targets through offshore wind power production, however, this is hampered by intermittency and great distance to consumers. BOWE2X helps resolve these problems by researching options to apply power-to-X solutions to transform excess offshore wind electricity into energy carriers like hydrogen. These can subsequently be stored or moved to consumers before being used as fuel or converted back into electricity.
Read more about the project

KISMET

KISMET – sustainable food environments
The project KISMET helps public authorities create favourable conditions for food producers and consumers to choose sustainable food options.
Read more about the project

Energy Equilibrium

Carbon driven energy equilibrium at the municipal scale
The project Energy Equilibrium helps public authorities and energy suppliers secure uninterrupted energy supply by developing solutions to store renewable energy.
Read more about the project

GYPREG

Tackling agricultural phosphorus load by soil amendments
The project GYPREG brings together national and public authorities, NGOs, farmers and farmers´ associations to increase the uptake of gypsum treatment of agricultural fields that allows to reduce phosphorus losses from agriculture.
Read more about the project

BALTFLOODS

Baltic Flood Resilience and Digital Solutions
The project BALTFLOODS helps public authorities better monitor and respond to floods, reduce polluted stormwater discharges, and encourage community engagement in addressing environmental threats.
Read more about the project

ChemClimCircle-2

Fostering implementation of the ChemClimCircle approach to Green Public Procurement in the Baltic Sea Region
The project ChemClimCircle-2 provides public authorities with targeted training and an online platform to easily integrate climate protection, circularity, and chemical reduction goals into public procurement, promoting a greener, toxin-free future.
Read more about the project

PestSpace

Improving resilience to the spread of plant diseases via a regional Pest Common Data Space
The project PestSpace helps farmers, authorities, and researchers quickly detect and respond to emerging plant pests using AI and environmental DNA, protecting crops and ecosystems in the Baltic Sea region.
Read more about the project

REAVES

REAVES – Resilient Ecosystems for AV&M Entrepreneurial Support
REAVES project platform drives the way for a coherent cross-sectoral support strategy for the film, gaming, and music industries in the Baltic Sea region, helping authorities, education, and industry actors retain young talent and keep the cultural and creative industries resilient and thriving. REAVES consolidates outcomes from 22 EU projects.
Read more about the project

EcoDesign Circle

Ecodesign as Driver of Innovation in the BSR
The Interreg project Ecodesign Circle successfully introduced ecodesign thinking and acting to design centres and numerous design companies in five countries around the Baltic Sea, as well as to the Bureau of European Design Associations - a strong move towards a circular economy in Europe.
Read more about the project

MANURE STANDARDS

Advanced manure standards for sustainable nutrient management and reduced emissions
Agriculture releases large amounts of nutrients into the Baltic Sea, with a significant amount of emissions from animal manure. In this project, policy makers, authorities, advisors, farmers and researchers create, test and implement tools to determine manure standards for farming practices and policy instruments. The new manure standards are to improve nutrient recycling and reduce nutrient inflow in the Baltic Sea.
Read more about the project

Enercracy

Enercracy - energy plans and communities towards energy democracy for green transition
The project Enercracy equips municipalities with climate and energy plans to support the growth of energy communities and prosumers, while inspiring others to see how active engagement drives the green energy transition
Read more about the project

MentalHealthMatters

Mental Health Matters – Making Enterprises in the BSR more Resilient by Tackling Psychosocial Risks in the Workplace
The project MentalHealthMatters connects public health experts and employers to prevent psychosocial risks at the workplace and thus improve the well-being of employees.
Read more about the project

Circular FoodShift

Circular FoodShift in the Baltic countries
The project Circular FoodShift helps authorities in rural and peri-urban municipalities transform food models with less food waste at schools and gastronomy and new businesses upcycling food and food waste.
Read more about the project

ENERPO

Energy production improvement based on dynamic mobile positioning data
Unused energy is still a major reason for the insufficient use of energy and thus waste of energy and resources. A more precise prediction of energy consumption would help to increase the efficient use of energy. ENERPO aims to elaborate tools and strategies to improve the prediction of energy consumption in three Baltic States. This could help to better match energy production and demand.
Read more about the project

NonHazCity 2

Capitalizing key elements of NonHazCity: empowering private and professional users for better risk management and use reduction of chemical products in their cities
The Interreg project NonHazCity 2 built municipalities’ capacity in chemicals management and campaigned on the dangers of plastics in our everyday life.
Read more about the project

RESIST

Regional Ecosystems for Social Innovation and Social Transformation
In the project RESIST, regional authorities, business support organisations and sectoral agencies develop a model of how to open up existing regional innovation ecosystems for social innovators and social entrepreneurs tackling societal and environmental challenges.
Read more about the project

WaterMan Seed

Climate resilient wastewater and groundwater management by circular approaches that reduce outflows of nutrients and hazardous substances
WaterMan develops and promotes circular approaches to reducing outflows of nutrients and hazardous substances to surface water, groundwater and the Baltic Sea. Its centre of attention is measures and techniques to re-use water from wastewater treatment plants and the retention of water before flowing to the sea. The project focuses on measures at the local level and on areas in the Baltic Sea region, where the water supply may be affected by climate change. It explicitly addresses this by developing circular approaches for municipalities & water companies.
Read more about the project

Blue Platform

Bioeconomy for Blue Growth in the Baltic Sea Region – a platform project to capitalize on the outputs of complementary transnational projects
Blue Platform compiled solutions from Interreg and Horizon projects in blue bioeconomy to pave the way for emerging economic opportunities that explore innovative and sustainable uses of marine resources.
Read more about the project

MI-RAP

Music Industry Resilience Acceleration Programme
The project MI-RAP helps local authorities, sectoral agencies and business support organisations attract fresh talents to the music industry, while ensuring more cross-sectoral cooperation and integration of emerging technologies and green practices at the same time.
Read more about the project

BSR Stars S3

Stimulating smart specialization ecosystem through engaging SMEs in open innovation processes
Through the project BSR Stars S3, business support organisations, public authorities and policy makers in several regions around the Baltic Sea know more about how to turn their smart specialisation strategies for advancing bio and circular economies into action.
Read more about the project

POWER UP

Towards a more efficient organisation of the prosumer construct in energy communities
Citizens, or rather groups of private individuals, have a high potential to contribute to decentralising the production of energy - but their joint role as energy consumers and producers, or ‘prosumers’, is complex. The prosumer construct is under-researched and inefficient. This limits its full potential and requires additional support mechanisms and guidance. POWER UP attempts to offer an inclusive option for all consumers to have a direct stake in producing, consuming or sharing energy through efficient organization at a local level.
Read more about the project

BAB

Bike across the Baltic - Improving bicycle tourism around the Baltic Sea
The project BAB helps public authorities across the region harmonise infrastructure development of the Baltic Sea Cycle route and promote cycling tourism in the region.
Read more about the project

BSUIN

Baltic Sea Underground Innovation Network
The Interreg project BSUIN tackled underutilisation of the underground laboratories serving as a business development and innovation platform for representatives of business, academia and regional development agencies across the Baltic Sea region.
Read more about the project

Circular spaces

Circular Economy makerspace
The project Circular spaces brings together operators and users of maker spaces in eco-design and material reuse to jointly contribute to sustainable product development.
Read more about the project

NSB CoRe

North Sea Baltic Connector of Regions
In the project NSB Core, spatial and transport planners and other experts representing local, regional and national authorities from six countries developed a joint vision on how to ensure better integrated and accessible eastern and southern parts of the Baltic Sea region.
Read more about the project

Solutions stay with the people: listen to our #InterregVoices

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© UBC SCC/Mariia Andreeva

Thanks to Interreg (...), we created momentum for essential aspects of sustainable water management connected to climate change, for example improving the wastewater and storm water management, reducing water pollution, and increasing the application of circular economy principles. [IWAMA; BSR Water]

 

 

 

Agnieszka Ilola 

Head of Secretariat, Union of the Baltic Cities, Sustainable Cities Commission

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Dmitry Frank-Kamenetsky

I can name a large number of examples of project outputs directly integrated into the regional policy framework. The first one is the recommendation on sludge handling. It was largely based on the PURE project. What’s more, the technologies tested in the project PURE to treat wastewater are in regular use now.

 

 

 

Dmitry Frank-Kamenetsky

 Special Advisor to HELCOM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© City of Turku

Thanks to Interreg projects, we have improved our public services for our citizens. Our water treatment facility has been involved in benchmarking water management processes and our water management processes have continuously been improving. Now, we have even better water quality and managed to keep the price of our water services at a moderate level.

Minna Arve

Mayor of Turku, Finland

#MadeWithInterreg solutions by topic

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