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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

INBETS BSR

Innovative Business Transfer Models for SMEs in the BSR
The project INBETS BSR enabled business support organisations to improve consultations in business transfer and ensure continuity in complex handover processes.
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

IWAMA

Interactive WAter MAnagement
The Interreg project IWAMA equipped waste water managers with new audit tools and a durable platform for life-long learning and exchange so that they can better protect our environment, in particular by optimising the energy use and sludge management of waste water treatment plants.
Read more about the project

MAMBA

Maximised Mobility and Accessibility of Services in Regions Affected by Demographic Change
The Interreg project MAMBA introduced innovative mobility solutions making public transport, welfare services and goods delivery more convenient and accessible in rural areas across the Baltic Sea region.
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

BSR Go-abroad

BSR Go-abroad - building market and supply chain opportunities for micro SMEs within the Baltic Sea Region
The project BSR Go-abroad develops a blueprint for micro SMEs to help them expand business offers and enter new markets across the Baltic Sea region in order to keep their businesses thriving regardless of any disruptions to come.
Read more about the project

LUCIA

Lighting the Baltic Sea Region - Cities accelerate the deployment of sustainable and smart urban lighting solutions
LUCIA helped municipalities in the Baltic Sea region save energy by the deployment of smart urban lighting solutions.
Read more about the project

RegenT

Integrating Regenerative Practices in Nature and Cultural Tourism​
RegenT project platform develops a regenerative tourism hub, offering training and policy recommendations for public authorities, destination management organisations (DMOs), NGOs, and business support organisations to make revitalisation and sustainable tourism a guiding strategy across the region. RegenT consolidates outcomes from 7 EU projects.
Read more about the project

CONTRA

Baltic Beach Wrack - Conversion of a Nuisance To a Resource and Asset
The CONTRA project helped local authorities and businesses in coastal destinations that rely on beach tourism identify viable solutions for managing and recycling beach wrack whilst protecting the Baltic Sea.
Read more about the project

Mobile Hospital

Mobile Hospital, Digital counseling environment for children and families
The project Mobile Hospital develops a mobile application that helps children and their families experience authentic hospital surroundings and better prepare for a hospital visit.
Read more about the project

RESTinBSR

Unlocking transformative ecotourism potential for sustainable regional development
RESTinBSR is aimed at unlocking the potential of an innovative form of ecotourism - transformative ecotourism - by involving into the ecotourism development new groups of actors, including rural entrepreneurs, local communities, NGOs and social movements dealing with ecology. The project seeks to use transnational learning and collaboration for developing a set of innovative tools for the promotion of transformative ecotourism businesses in the Baltic Sea region's peripheral areas.
Read more about the project

Distance LAB

Distance LAB
The ongoing fourth industrial revolution has strong implications for companies, e.g. the need to have a global perspective and to remain able to attract workers with changing expectations and to manage talent flow within companies. Distance LAB wants to ensure that SMEs have tools that keep them well informed and well connected to make rational strategic decision that keep up their innovativeness. Distance LAB wants to provide to agents of innovation support a toolkit for distance interaction softskills to eliminate distance between SMEs, RDI organisations, researchers, test facilities, innovation support agencies, workers etc and end users.
Read more about the project

BSR Food Coalition

Baltic Municipality’s Food Coalition
The project BSR Food Coalition connects local farmers and public authorities to ensure regular access to organic food meals at schools, and thus a continuous demand for healthy food supply.
Read more about the project

ORMOBASS

Operational R-Mode Baltic Sea System to support resilient navigation
To ensure safer navigation at the Baltic Sea, the project ORMOBASS introduces a terrestrial R-Mode system that replaces global navigation satellite systems in case of disruptions, and warns ships about increased navigational risks.
Read more about the project

BalticBlueMarinas

Remote Baltic Marinas as Drivers for Sustainable Coastal and Maritime Tourism Development
BalticBlueMarinas aims to capitalise the sustainable use of marinas as key actors of tourism destinations in the Baltic Sea region. Marinas are seen as separate entities in relation to other actors of the tourism sector, even if they are an essential part of the overall tourism package. The goal is to strengthen the cooperation between actors to foster growth, by integrating marinas into the regional tourism development and recreational boating with other tourism sectors.
Read more about the project

Baltic Blue Growth

Baltic Blue Growth - Initiation of full scale mussel farming in the Baltic sea
The Interreg project Baltic Blue Growth paved the way for the farming of blue mussels to become common business practice in the Baltic Sea.
Read more about the project

Baltic Sea e-Nav

Shared waters – Same standards. Baltic Sea Partnership for Future Navigation
The project Baltic Sea e-Nav creates the next generation of navigational products and services compliant with new international standards, enabling national authorities and other maritime organisations to ensure safer, more harmonised and eco-efficient navigation at the Baltic Sea.
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

BEACH-SOS

Climate Smart Baltic Beaches and Tourism
The BEACH-SOS project helps authorities, businesses, and local communities adapt to the changing climate to ensure thriving and sustainable beach recreation and tourism in the future.
Read more about the project

CONTAR

Contaminated sediments in the Baltic Sea: assessment, remediation and management revisited
In marine coastal environments, sediments contaminated by anthropogenic activities are a significant source of hazardous substances. However, there is lack of harmonised assessment methodology or common management protocols for contaminated sediments among the Baltic Sea countries. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop guidelines to combine chemical and biological measurements to obtain reliable evaluations of sediment toxicity. The project aims at creating a platform for analysing state of the art in the current risk assessment of contaminated sediments in order to set the basis for the harmonisation of methodologies.
Read more about the project

Energize Co2mmunity

Real-life implementation of renewable community energy projects
The project Energize Co2mmunity piloted six renewable community energy (CE) projects across the Baltic Sea region.

Read more about the project

AREA 21

Baltic Smart City Areas for the 21st century
The Interreg project AREA21 involved local and regional public authorities, energy providers, public property owners and citizens from six countries and improved cooperative planning processes by applying ICT-based tools for visualisation of energy consumption and upscaling good practices in energy saving to a district level.
Read more about the project

COMBINE

Strengthening Combined Transport in the Baltic Sea Region
COMBINE contributed to a shift to a more sustainable and efficient combined transport in the Baltic Sea region.
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

InBets +

Innovative business transfers in the BSR +
InBets+ organised events and training courses, to train small and medium sized enterprises all across the Baltic Sea region in successful business transfers.

Read more about the project

ENT-MIND

Entrepreneurial mindset development within youth sector
Promoting an entrepreneurial culture, mindset and attitudes among Europeans is of paramount importance in fostering youth entrepreneurship. ENT-MIND aims at improving the entrepreneurial education of young people by integrating new and innovative education approaches and methodologies into existing education offers.
Read more about the project

BSR SMART LIFE

BSR Lifelong Learning for Smart Specializations
There is a great potential for cooperation and knowledge sharing among countries in the Baltic Sea region when it comes to lifelong learning: the countries have a lot in common when talking about the ageing society and education systems that do not fully correspond to the labour market expectations. Therefore, the exchange of good practices and joint development of new methods are crucial. The project focuses on building a structured dialog with key stakeholders in order to create awareness of the needed adjustments of the educational systems and adapt to a fast-changing labour market.
Read more about the project

Smart Blue Regions

Smart Blue Regions: Smart Specialisation and Blue Growth in the BSR
The Interreg project Smart Blue Regions helped public authorities of coastal regions at the Baltic Sea review and improve their research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation to trigger sustainable blue growth in the marine and maritime sectors.
Read more about the project

Arts on Prescription

Arts on Prescription in the Baltic Sea Region
The project Arts on Prescription helps public authorities, cultural and health institutions engage people with mental health challenges in social and non-therapy art activities to improve their mental wellbeing.
Read more about the project

Baltic Sea Food

Baltic Sea Food
The Interreg project Baltic Sea Food developed a new business model for business-to-business (B2B) distribution in the local food sector and helped small and medium-sized enterprises in rural areas to improve business performance.
Read more about the project

SEABAS

Strategic ecosystem-based planning for sustainable future of the Baltic Sea
SEABAS enables public authorities, international organisations, and NGOs to integrate sustainable marine resource use, balanced human activity at sea, and ecosystem protection into maritime spatial planning, using harmonised monitoring, data-sharing tools, and policy recommendations. SEABAS consolidates outcomes from 8 EU projects.
Read more about the project

CiNURGi

Circular nutrients for a sustainable Baltic Sea Region
The project CiNURGi brings companies into symbioses to recycle nutrient-rich biomass from agricultural, municipal, and industrial sources into safe fertilizers, and provides authorities with roadmaps to further facilitate reducing nutrient losses in future.
Read more about the project

BalticBiomass4Value

Unlocking the Potential of Bio-based Value Chains in the Baltic Sea Region
The project introduced new knowledge to sustainably use biomass as a reliable source of energy.
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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