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Environmental SOS
Published on 18 May 2021
Latvia
This is the good practice's implementation level. It can be national, regional or local.
About this good practice
This practice addresses environmental pollution problems and helps to deal with the offence against nature through a special free of charge mobile application. Specially created webpage of the SES provides a video tutorial, where everybody can learn about advantages of this application and how to use it. It tackles all types of pollution in the air, on the earth and in the water. The application is important, because there are numerous cases, when the household waste is thrown out somewhere in the nature, as well as other cases, when people violate environmental regulations, which should be prevented. For example, if somebody sees waste in the forest she can immediately report to the SES through this application. Furthermore, a person can also report if she collects the waste found in the nature and report about it on the application. Also, the reporter receives a feedback from the SES about prevention of an identified problem. All reports and their status are registered and can be seen on the homepage. The application and home page are administered by the SES, which is a state institution under supervision of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development of the Republic of Latvia. Both these organizations are the main stakeholders and beneficiaries of the practice. It also provides benefits for whole society by helping to reduce environmental pollution.
Resources needed
This practice has required creating the mobile application and a webpage to provide tutorial for using the application, as well as reporting on the detected waste and violation. The SES provides its own resources for dealing with reported issues related to environmental pollution.
Evidence of success
Since the application was created in 2015 until 2021, the SES has received over 12 000 reports on environmental pollution (Latvia has around 1.9 million inhabitants). The number of reports is gradually increasing starting from 283 in 2015 to 5124 in 2020. Comparing with 2019 the number of reports has doubled in 2020.
Potential for learning or transfer
The evidence shows that this is an efficient practice of awareness rising and involving society in the waste prevention and nature protection. It effectively targets the waste prevention, which is one of less developed and most problematic areas of the waste management in many EU regions. The results of reporting can be seen by other people that encourages them to participate in environmental protection as well. This is easy and resource efficient way, how to involve a large part of society in the prevention of environmental pollution. Therefore, many other countries and regions could transfer this good practice on their territories and use it.
Further information
Website
Good practice owner
You can contact the good practice owner below for more detailed information.
Organisation
The State Environment Service (SES) of the Republic of Latvia
Latvia
Latvija
Contact
Director, Project Manager