Complex Awareness Raising and Behaviour Change for the Mercury-Free City Environment

The  General  Objective  (GO)  of  the  LIFE  MERCURY-FREE  project  is  to  reduce  the environment  contaminations  by  mercury  contained  in  household  consumer  goods,  mishandled  by consumers, through  providing  an  informational  support  via  a  communication  and  cooperation  platform, organizing the wide informational and educational campaign and behavioural change activities, applying Behavioural Insights approach, building a multi-stakeholder confidence by creation of Mercury-Free City Communities in the cities, participating in the project, and applying methodologies for their joint search for the problem solution.

The  activities  of  the  project  will  take  place at  the  level  of the wide  public–consumers  of  goods, containingmercury. The locationof the project activities –four European cities: Lodz (Poland), Cracow (Poland), Lviv (Ukraine), Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine) – is  determined  by  several  factors. First,  all  the locations  are big  cities,  but  not  big  industrial  centers with  a  dominating  specific  type  of  industry  which could make a crucial influence on the mercury pollution level. Nor are they capitals of their states, which also  have  their  special  features  of  contamination  sources.  The  second  reason  is  the  long  lasting cooperation  of  the  institutions,  situated  in  these  cities.The  results  of  the  cooperation  and  common research interests create a strong background for the project (which is described in detail in the part 4.1 “Consortium  set-up”). One  more  reason –the  comparatively  similar  situation  of  the  treatment  of mercury-containing goods and public awareness in these locations, presented below.The control cities, in which there will be conducted the monitoring of the same indicators, as in the pilotingcities: Larissa (Greece),   Camerino   (Italy)   and   Évora (Portugal) - are   selected   because   they   have   the   alike characteristics  concerning  their  size,  administrative  status  and  industrial  development,  as  the pilotingcities. Last but not least –in these cities there are also the institutions – consortium members, which will participate  in  the  implementation  of  all  the  project  activities  in  the  pilot  cities  and  replicate  the  results obtained.

The project will implement the following Specific Objectives (SOs):

SO 1: To  collect  in  one informational hub,  communicate  to  respective  target  groups,  organize dissemination  and  management  of  the  information  in  the  field  of  mercury  contamination,  reduction  of mercury  usage  and  implementation  of  the  EU  mercury  legislation  and  Minamata  Convention  in  the scope connected with the Hg contaminations caused by the household goods and activities.

SO 2: To facilitate knowledge sharing on successful environmental solutions and practice in the field of mercury   contamination by developing the cooperation network and the platform for collecting, processing and sharing information and conducting informational campaigns and training.

SO 3: To advance the informational  awareness about  the  rules  and  demand  of  mercury-containing household  goods use,  storage  and  disposalofconsumersby  organizing  the  wide  informational  and educational campaign with parts tailored to different target groups.

SO 4: To raise amutual confidence of different stakeholders in the life cycle of the mercury-containing household  goods  by  multi-stakeholder  confidence  building  and  joint  multi-stakeholder  search  for  the problem  solution -preparation  of  a  Multi-Stakeholder  Roadmap  for  Mercury-Free  City,  as  well  as creation of the Mercury-Free City Communities.

SO 5: To achieve consumers’ of mercury-containing household goodsbehaviour change via behaviour change activities applying Behavioural Insights levers.

SO 6: To  ensure  credible  replication  and  transfer  of  the  project  results  by  application  of  the  Mutual Learning Exercise methodology and a dissemination campaign.

SO 7: To achieve sustainability and exploitation of the project results due to institutionalization of LIFE e-Hub and the Mercury-Free City Communities.