Glass mining as educational tool: sustainability perspectives

Abstract

Rural and urban landscapes are primary targets for implementation of EU Baltic Sea Regional and Helsinki Commission (HELCOM) Baltic Sea action plan strategies concerning remedial and recycling operations. Sweden is one of the leaders in the world elaborating environmental engineering and sustainability progress. The international project entitled “Phytoremediation park for treatment and recreation at glassworks contaminated sites” (acronym PHYTECO) which gathered under the Tripple Helix concept researchers, municipality experts and businessmen from Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine. The aim is to investigate the benefits of prospective environmentally friendly mining in contaminated with glass waste areas thus as the result having elaborated landscape quality, promoted beyond the zero waste ideas on recycling and driven phytoremediation technologies as future state-of-the-art landfill remedial technique. The ongoing project foresees cross-border collaboration on landscape policy and remediation strategy among Baltic Sea countries through share of knowledge and best practice among the involved partners. It intends the clean-up of rural landscapes damaged by old glassworks landfills located at Kingdom of Crystal, Sweden. The final goal is establishing a recreation park at the old Boda glassworks in Emmaboda town that may attract tourists for visiting this place. Hence large efforts are devoted to educational values which were targeted during field course in 2016 where international students of different levels from 25 countries participated. The course took place in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Sweden with active participation of Ukrainian pedagogic forces.