The City of Lappeenranta’s Environmental Office has applied for and been granted funding from UPM-Kymmene Corporation’s Biofore Share and Care programme for a display panel to present water topics.

During 2020-2022, good practices are being sought in the South Karelia region to promote low-carbon activities. The project is carried out by the Imatra and Lappeenranta regional environmental offices.

The City of Lappeenranta has reached the finals in the competition for the greenest city in Europe, or the 2021 European Green Leaf Award. Lappeenranta was among the finalists last year as well, but did not win. Now the city will be able to pursue the title once again in the finals to be held in Lisbon at the turn of September–October. 

The City of Lappeenranta wants to be involved in the global efforts of companies in the region to mitigate climate change. The city has now started to support this by acquiring two solar-powered cookers from the Lappeenranta-based company Afstor Oy. The cookers will be delivered to a village without electricity in Africa, where wood is burned as an energy source for cooking, among other things.  

The city of Lappeenranta has prepared a climate program for the next ten years during the past winter. The city wanted to involve companies and residents in the preparation of the program. Therefore, Lappeenranta organized multiple workshops with different themes like energy, transport, and construction. Plenty of useful ideas and suggestions came up in the workshops.

The City of Lappeenranta is organising a seminar in Brussels on 3 March 2020. The topic of the seminar is " Cities as Trailblazers – How can global challenges be solved at the local level?". The seminar will be held jointly with a committee representing the EU member states, the Association of Finnish Municipalities, and the Association of South Karelia.

The city of Lappeenranta is taking part in the climate summit arranged in Madrid on December 9. 200 countries have been invited to the event.

City government's Second Chairperson Hanna Holopainen, a Member of Parliament, presents the city's climate actions in a seminar arranged during the summit, where the actions and presence of cities in climate issues is discussed.   

Revolution of circular economy?

MERVI: The basis of the Urban Infra Revolution (UIR) project is to develop more sustainable and ecological materials from local side streams to future building. The goal is to manufacture material that can be, vernacularly, 3D printed to its final form, so molds are no longer needed. At the same time, concerning the printing technique, a certain rheology and runniness is expected of the material, so the final product has a smooth and aesthetic surface. The material now exists, and it's called "geposite".

A Greenreality Homes operated test period of sustainable everyday living was arranged for voluntary households in Lappeenranta from September to October. The households participating had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with everyday living that produces a smaller carbon footprint and experiment with goods and services that support sustainable ways of living. During the test period, the households managed to reduce their carbon footprints by approximately 12 percent. 

Flowrox Corona^® has been launched - the first-of-a-kind and unique industrial water treatment technology, in which non-thermal plasma is in direct contact with water to destroy dissolved organic pollutants. Plasma generated oxidants effectively remove color, odor and organic residues while disinfecting the water.