The city of Vaasa joined the Sustainable Development Project run by the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities in 1992.

The purpose of the project was to develop municipal waste management. As a result today only 10% of municipal solid waste goes to the landfill. The rest is either recycled or processed into RDF-fuel (refuse derived fuel), humus and bio-gas in a waste disposal plant which consists of a sorting unit and two bio-gas reactors.

The years of 1995-1996 saw an ecological planning competition on the Ristinummi suburb. At the same time a project was initiated to find out how children could participate in planning of the environment they live in. It showed that the environmental needs of children can be included in planning instructions and that children are quite competent at planning the environment for themselves.

In 1996 Adult Education Centres in Vaasa started an education programme called `Local Democracy and Sustainable Development'. Over 700 citizens benefited from the lectures and study circles (1% of the total population of Vaasa). The latter brought a lot of valuable suggestions on sustainable development to the city administration.