Welcome to the Land of Pure Nature: Your Guide to Keeping Finland Clean

Tervetuloa! Welcome to Finland! As you prepare to explore our wonderful summer cities and breathtaking wilderness, you’re about to experience a very clean environment. To help you feel right at home, here is a quick guide on the Finnish Way of keeping our surroundings beautiful.

In the City: The Bin

When you are exploring the streets of Helsinki, Tampere, or any of our charming towns, the etiquette is simple: trash always goes in the bin. You will find waste bins conveniently located on street corners, at bus stops, and in parks. Keeping the pavement clean is a shared point of pride for many of us, and we are so grateful when our guests help us maintain that sparkle.

There are also dedicated bins for cigarette butts where they don’t pose a fire hazard. Unfortunately, cigarette butts are still a common form of litter in Finland that we want to get off our streets and out of our nature. Just this past spring, a puppy in Finland tragically died of nicotine poisoning after chewing on a cigarette butt before its owner could intervene.

Bonus Tip: The Magic of Bottle Returns! In Finland, almost all beverage bottles and cans have a deposit. Instead of tossing them, take them to a ‘palautusautomaatti’ (return machine) found in every grocery store. Just make sure the bottles and cans are intact and not crushed, as the machines need to scan the barcodes and shapes to give you your refund! You’ll get some money, and the environment stays clean!

In the Wild: Pack It In, Pack It Out

Finland’s national parks and forests are vast and serene. To keep them as natural as possible, many of our hiking trails and rest spots do not have trash bins. This is an intentional choice to reduce the noise and environmental impact of garbage trucks in sensitive areas.

The Golden Rule of Finnish Hiking: What you carry into nature, you carry out of nature.

Pro-Tip: The Spare Bag Method. Always keep an extra bag—like an empty bread bag or a small reusable dry bag—in your backpack. It’s the easiest and cleanest way to store your wrappers, fruit peels, or used napkins until you return to a recycling point or your accommodation. And yes, even fruit peels are considered litter that should not be left in nature. After all, how would you feel looking at a beautiful natural landscape if every visitor had tossed their banana and mandarin peels all over the forest?

Note! That same extra bag might come in handy if you stumble upon a patch of delicious wild blueberries or mushrooms!

Common Courtesy

• Don’t Burn Trash: Use fireplaces only for wood or clean paper. Burning plastic or cans releases toxins and leaves a mess—let’s keep the air and fire pits clean!
• Leave No Trace: If you’re not near a dry toilet, bury your waste or pack out your toilet paper in your trash bag. It keeps the trails pleasant for the next hiker.
• Be a Hero: If you see litter left by others, feel free to pick it up. A small act of kindness for nature makes you a true local hero in our eyes!

Travel Like a Local: Pro-Tips for Less Waste

The smartest way to handle trash is to avoid creating it in the first place. Here’s how you can travel like a seasoned Finnish hiker:

• Ditch the Single-Use: Instead of buying juice boxes with plastic straws, use a durable, refillable water bottle. Finland has some of the cleanest tap water in the world.
• Choose less packaging: If you head to the store before your nature trip to buy snacks, pay attention to the packaging: the fewer wrappers a product has, the less trash you will generate during your hike.
• If you happen to live in Finland and are looking for tips for smoother hiking, try this: pack your snacks into reusable containers at home so that you generate very little waste during your trip. Leave plastic and other single-use wrappers in your recycling bins at home; once you return from your hike, you can simply wash the reusable containers for their next use. Ecological and convenient!

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