Rapala VMC and Keep the Archipelago Tidy working together to fight marine and lake littering

Recreational angling is more than the thrill of the catch – it’s about exploring, respecting, and preserving the outdoors. All the Rapala VMC units globally are encouraged to take part in local projects that contribute to topics close to us, such as restoring rivers or preventing litter from entering the waterways. In Finland Rapala VMC has a long history of collaboration with Keep the Archipelago Tidy Association. Keep the Archipelago Tidy (KAT) is a Finnish environmental organization that has operated already since the late 1960’s with a mission to fight marine and lake littering. The reason why Rapala wants to support this cause is simple: littering is a major threat to the marine animals and the environment. Trash in water causes marine animals to get entangled in it and digesting it, not to even mention the problem of microplastics.

One part of our cooperation with KAT are Clean Beach (Siisti Biitsi) clean up events that have been organized also this year. The purpose of the Clean Beach program is to tidy up our country’s beaches, collect information about littering on our beaches and raise awareness about the littering situation. At the same time this a great chance for companies like us to get the employees together and spend a fun day outdoors doing some important work!

This year in Finland we organized two Clean Beach events in September: one close to both of our units. Many of our employees are passionate about fishing and outdoors, so these events are something people really enjoy and find important. Our beach clean ups showed an interesting observation, that also Keep the Archipelago Tidy’s Program Manager confirmed: even a beach that looks clean at first sight typically conceals a huge amount of trash. For example at Helsinki Mustikkamaa beach in just couple of hours our group was able to collect about 1700 pieces of trash! In addition to the immediate benefits a cleaner beach offers, these events also contribute in bigger picture by generating important data. As you can maybe guess, the most common types of trash we found during our events were the same ones that dominate the statistics regarding Finnish beaches (as well as globally): cigarettes and pieces of plastic.