Ren Kustlinje
Clean Coastline is an innovative EU project (founded through the Interreg resund-Kattegatt-Skagerrak program, Innovation Area) and is ongoing in the period 1/1 2016 - 31/12 2018.

The main objective of the project is on marine waste as a common challenge for the countries around the KASK region. 34 partners from Sweden, Norway and Denmark participate in the project with the overall objective to develop new smarter and less costly methods, models and techniques to manage the marine waste more efficiently in the future.

The overall goal with the project is to Establish innovative collaborations between research institutions and public administrations. This will be done through developing:
- Working methods and models to mapping, identify and analyze marine waste
- Working methods and organization to reduce waste and keep the coastline clean
- Knowledge and behavior to raise awareness and to minimize and prevent new waste

The results from the project will give more efficient beach cleaning methods and organizations, better and more circular handling of collected materials, more knowledge about occurrence and spread, prevention actions, mapping and measures on local sources of emissions, increased knowledge and awareness in different target groups.

For the partners the essential goal is that the efforts from the project will give long-term effects such as less marine litter in our oceans and on our beaches.

In recent years, marine littering has attracted enormous attention in media. At the same time, the issue has been raised high on the political agenda, both at national and international level and in global forums like UN (The Ocean Conference, June 2017). The extent and the negative effects of both macro waste and microparticles have been reported by researchers, operational staff, public and politicians. Awareness and willingness to address the problem, including through reduced use of plastic in various forms, as well as better collection and disposal, has increased enormously.

The Clean Coastline project has been part of this "awareness journey". It has taken its own energy from the ongoing movement and has also been a powerful contributing part to supporting more innovative work and local solutions for lasting solutions to support and help responsible organizations. It is primarily small coastal municipalities that are responsible for cleaning up and handling the marine waste in accordance with national legislation in Sweden, Denmark and Norway.

During the project significant changes have been done in the three Scandinavian countries. More resources have been devoted to beach cleaning as well as to research and prevention. Trade business and producers has woken up and is looking for renewable materials that could replace plastic as well as a changing behaviour among its customers and themselves. More private individuals have volunteered for beach cleaning!

The constant question is how the value of plastic can be increased so that reuse and recycling of plastics can increase from today's low figures. Plastic is an important resource and we have to take care better care of it in the future, before it ends up in our seas and breaks down into microparticles where it enters the food chain with effects as of yet unknown effects.