About the Project

The ocean regions of the North face various environmental hazards in the 21st century. Since pollution does not recognise state borders, international cooperation is needed to tackle these threats for marine environment. However, sometimes you don't have to invent the wheel again or start from scratch, in order to gear up for these challenges. Many projects have already produced solutions, best practices, methods and tools, how marine pollution can be prevented in the first place, or how it can be addressed, if it takes places. POPCORN as a clustering project disseminates outcomes from other projects dealing with plastic pollution and oil spills to new audiences in new regions.

The POPCORN partnership is made by four organisations representing three NPA and one Baltic Sea region projects. Two of the projects, APP4SEA and OIL SPILL have addressed oil spill issues, whereas Circular Ocean and Blue Circular Economy have been dealing with plastic pollution of seas. More information about the projects is available below:

Besides the above mentioned project partners, POPCORN has also several associated partners, which form an extended project partnership. The associates take actively part in implementation of project tasks.

The target groups of POPCORN can be divided roughly into the following two categories:

  1. Local authorities, experts and NGOs working with either oil spill response and prevention or with maritime litter and environmental protection.
  2. The general public of the communities located along the shores of the Ocean regions of North and further away in inland.

The project has three contents work packages and two work packages that address general project issues. These WPs are described in detail below.

  • T1 - Increasing capacity of environmental experts - disseminating project outputs of the participating projects to experts working with oil spill and marine plastic pollution issues
  • T2 - Increasing knowledge in northern communities about oil spills and plastic maritime pollution - raising awareness about oil spills and marine plastic pollution among the general public
  • T3 - Updating the APP4SEA smart map - expanding and updating the smart map that has been created in APP4SEA project, which can be used both as a tool for experts and as an educational tool for public
  • C - Communication - internal and external communication of the project
  • M - Management - coordination and administration issues of the project