Environmental challenges cannot be solved by each country separately. By sharing knowledge and exploring new terrain, transnational cooperation enables to tackle such pressing issues. This was well reflected at the discussions held during this year’s Annual Forum of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR), encouraging to ‘reduce, reuse and rethink’ approaches for the benefit of the environment and people.

Just in time, at the peak of implementing 123 Interreg Baltic Sea Region cooperation projects, the Russian Federation has become a fully-fledged member of the Programme. Numerous projects have taken on board Russian partners. They help tackle challenges that go beyond borders and build trust across the region.

There is something that house cleaning products, brie cheese and a pile of animal manure have in common. That is an pungent and unpleasant smell. A reason behind the bad odour is the chemical compound ammonia. The smell ammonia spreads is as bad as it’s harmful for the environment. Therefore, partners within the Baltic Slurry Acidification project joined forces to reduce the ammonia emitted from farms.

Ferries are moving people all across the Baltic Sea region, be it from Kiel to Helsinki or just across Rostock’s river Warnow. But often, it’s hard to find them as a travel alternative to airplanes or local busses. The Real Time Ferries project (RTF) works to change this situation. Johan Östling from the Swedish RTF partner RISE Viktoria explains how the RTF idea will overcome the project duration and why placing a hackathon on board a ferry can be a great move.