As future environmental engineers we should not only learn how to solve, predict and prevent possible ecological problems, but we should also be able to communicate with people.
Everybody is responsible for the future of our planet. Therefore, it is important for us as environmentalists to increase environmental awareness and involve everyone in a gentle but assertive way. In our programme we have a compulsory course “Environmental Communication”, that teaches us to understand the principles and best practises of sustainability communication by making us work on an example case project.
Our team of 4 Finns and 2 Russians is working on a project, which is also a part of Safe Environment and Cleaner Waterways to Blue Baltic Sea “Lugabalt2”. Our task is to study microplastics in water ecosystems, particularly rivers to plan and implement a communication event on this topic.
We came up with an idea to create a communication event targeted on local elementary school children 7 – 13 y.o. (as well as their parents and teachers) of Luzhskiy and Kingiseppskiy districts in Russia & South-Savo in Finland. We are aiming to educate them about the microplastic and its harmful impacts on the environment in an easy and entertaining way.
How we are implementing the project: First, we had a few brainstorm sessions in our team and we created a communication plan. We presented it to the teacher and our classmates.
The second step – we created a PDF leaflet, which we sent to schools in Finland and in Russia. Overall we have covered 98 institutions. There are QR codes to our social media profiles in our leaflets. We ask elementary schools teachers to participate, follow us and spread the leaflet among their students. We also post short educational videos (in Finnish, Russian languages with Eng subtitles) on TikTok and Instagram pages @bal_tastic.
Our teacher supports us all the way in this project. She gives us all the relevant information how to plan and implement environmental communication event. She taught us keep in mind the potential barriers and sources of noise that may prevent us from successfully reaching our target audience, and she made us think how to overcome them.
We are happy to improve our cross-cultural communication, team working and presentation skills, while having an impact on the microplastic pollution problem.
Environmental Engineering students:
Carla Catherine,
Karaseva Alexandra
Lehtonen Kirsi
Mäntylä Janne
Sulo Eveliina
Volodina Kseniia