The Vantaan River starts from a street well - you don't feed waterways with your garbage, do you?

The city of Riihimäki participates in the Mahanpuruja from plastic campaign organized by the Keep Saaristo Siistinä ry. In the campaign, the citizens of the city are awakened by picture stickers attached around the street rainwater wells about the fact that garbage from the wells flows directly into our waterways.

- The city of Riihimäki is participating in the campaign for the second time. Most of the city's stormwater flows into the Vantaanjoki, where endangered trout live, for example, so this is an important campaign for us, says Riihimäki's city gardener Päivi Sundman.

The stickers are in the street scene of the center of Riihimäki for two to four weeks, after which they are removed.

In Riihimäki, stickers can be seen, for example, near the Atomi shopping center, Granit square and at the corner of Jukka Jalonen park. There are about ten objects in total.

Street drains lead directly to Vantaanjoki

Cigarette butts, nicotine pouches, cans and plastic wrappers thrown on the ground are carried by wind and rainwater into street wells. A large part of the street wells, on the other hand, leads the stormwater directly into the nearest watercourse, which is the Vantaanjoki in Riihimäki, without being cleaned. Street wells in cities generally do not have filters that would collect the debris carried by rainwater and meltwater, i.e. stormwater. Urban stormwater networks are estimated to be one of the major routes of macro-waste, such as cigarette butts, nicotine pouches and chewing gum, into waterways.

Lack of knowledge is still the main reason why people litter. It is common to throw cigarette butts into street wells without knowing that their filters are plastic. The goal of the "Mahanpuruja plastista" campaign is to wake up people passing by to think about the impact of their own behavior on the littering of waterways and to increase information about the routes of garbage.

The Stomach Bites from Plastic campaign can be seen in several cities in Finland

In the Saaristo Siistinä ry's Mahanpuruja plastic campaign, city manhole covers will be marked with colorful fish pictures all over Finland during the campaign period from August 19 to September 1, 2024.

The stomach-churning from plastic campaign is part of the extensive national PlastLIFE project, the goal of which is a sustainable circular economy of plastics in Finland by 2035. In a circular economy, different products are kept in use as long as possible and materials are recycled. That's why the manhole cover stickers in the campaign are made of material that can be recycled as metal after use. The PlastLIFE project receives funding from the EU's LIFE program, which has been used to produce the project's materials. The content of the materials represents only the project's own views, for which CINEA/European Commission is not responsible.

More information about the campaign Keep the archipelago clean from the association's website.