What is AWARE project

Goal

Goal of the project is to… The demand for a healthy and safe environment is increasingly being recognized by CBC South-East Finland–Russia together with the need to inform the population about practical solutions to environmental problems related to poor waste management. In particular, the priority 3 (Attractive, clean environment and region) has an indicative action directly addressing the need for better environmental education and business development in waste management: “(1) promoting research, planning, and education in the fields of the environment, resource efficiency, eco-efficiency, environmental audit schemes, and sustainable development”.

Partnering organizations

Against the backdrop of a general crisis of MSW management in the Russian Federation, in 2019 the CBC South-East Finland – Russia supported the project AWARE (Against Waste: Activate Research and Education). The project team led by LUT University (LUT) and Finnish side also comprised another partner Savonia University of Applied Sciences (SUAS) and two Russian partners, St Petersburg Forest Technical University (FTU) and St Petersburg State University of Industrial Technologies and Design (UITD).

Objectives

The overall objective of the project has been to increase environmental awareness of residents, university teachers, researchers, students, administrators, businessmen and of St Petersburg and Leningrad Region to enhance their knowledge, skills and capabilities for sustainable waste management. The following sections gives an overall brief description of priority focus points and goals on the project:

  • Increased residents’ awareness of both serious environmental threats and the economic potential associated with recyclable waste in St Petersburg and the Leningrad Region.
  • Improved capacity of Finnish and especially young Russian students to seek and cease business opportunities in the area of waste management, recycling and re-purposing of materials, others might be consider as waste.
  • Improved capacity/skills of university lecturers, researchers and other educators to provide education and to carry out research in sustainable waste management.
  • Improved capacity of the local authorities for decision making in the area of waste management and recycling.
  • More active participation in the development of a circular economy of Russian and Finnish businessmen and entrepreneurs.

To achieve the above, the project team set to work in April 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, efficiently relying on modern remotely collaboration tools. This world scale situation has boosted the partners skills on developing remote communication tactics, skills and techniques, which without a doubt enhance projects personnel’s capability to use the same skills in near future to achieve the previously mentioned goals in wider scale, e.g. with remote teaching of students, who are unable to participate to planned events locally.

Within the year 2020, the project delivered e.g. on-line training course in Life Cycle Costing (LCC) for sustainability related investments costs matter skill development, developed by the Lead Partner (LUT) and hosted an conference session in BIOS forum 2020 on September 18–21 (https://www.bios-club.spb.ru/bios-forum). Starting in 2021, project is offering the first project training event, Winter Camp, which will take place in St. Petersburg. The Camp is a week-long lecture-based introductory course in waste management, aimed at Russian university students. It will be jointly taught by Russian and Finnish university lecturers with aim of making the training activities meaningful, engaging and fun.