While the news are full of alarming signals about war and economic turmoil, its good to remember that there are also positive news out there.
One of these initiatives in our second home market, Estonia, is expanding. “The Sea Starts Here” initiative was created by a young environmental group that started their activities by organizing voluntary clean-ups among a small group of friends back in 2019.
Since the clean-ups started, the group has been able to see increasingly clearly that the nature of much of our waste is addiction-based. It actually would require very little for an individual to make a difference, at the time of creating waste. To make a difference, rather than organizing clean-ups it is necessary to focus on the causes of waste in our environment. There is strong tendency towards “garbage blindness” where we are so used to trash on streets that we do not react to it. We must raise the level of environmental education and awareness to reach more lasting impact.
This initiative aims to create awareness in all of us of our own power to affect waste streams. Disposing our cigarette butts in a trash rather than water streams is a small effort for an individual, but has a substantial impact on nature.
“The Sea Starts Here” project has marked more than 1,000 rainwater drainage holes in the fifteen largest cities and ports in Estonia during the summer of 2020, to inform citizens about the danger of cigarette butts entering the Baltic Sea.
The environment needs good initiatives and its a good reminder to us all, that for example all our seas are connected, and every decision affects our world.
The new steps in 2022 were to find and mark 250 new locations in Tallinn.
Combi Works would like to thank these people for such a great initiative.
For more information on the initiative, please visit their page.
