The purpose of the map service developed by the Finnish Environment Institute is to provide information on releases to air and water as well as on waste transfers by area selections to improve the conditions for citizens, organisations and companies to participate in decision-making that has an impact on the environment.
Releases to air and water as well as waste transfers can be viewed at the plant or municipal level. Facilitating access to information about environmental pressures on one’s own living environment is an important part of the objective of achieving a clean, non-harmful, comfortable and healthy environment.
The online service has been developed in cooperation with industry, producer organisations and national authorities. The activities included, as well as the release and waste transfer thresholds, are laid down in the regulation of the European Union. In Finland, all the activities included in the service are subject to an environmental permit, compliance with which is supervised by the ELY Centres (Centres for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment).
In the future, it will be possible to build additional services on the platform, for example on the content of environmental permits and on the supervision of plants. The website, published in Finnish, Swedish and English, has been commissioned by the Ministry of the Environment and is being further developed based on user experiences and feedback.
The service implements the vision of the EU, “a Healthy Planet for All”, which aims to reduce air, water and soil pollution to levels no longer considered harmful to health and natural ecosystems by 2050. The aim is to reduce the health impact of air pollutants by more than 55 % by 2030. The aim is also to significantly reduce waste generation and reduce by a quarter the proportion of ecosystems where air pollution threatens biodiversity.
Key links
- PRTR Pollutant Release information service
- Online service of Finland’s environmental administration ymparisto.fi
- European Environment Agency
- “Pathway to a Healthy Planet for All” EU Action Plan
- Regulation of the European Union on threshold values for emissions and shipments of waste
Further information and feedback
Project Manager Kristina Saarinen, Finnish Environment Institute, tel. +358 295 251 590, firstname.lastname@syke.fi
Feedback on the implementation of the service can be sent to the address PRTR@syke.fi via the link on the website.