Local public service companies in the City of Tampere established an Urban Environment
Centre in 2002. The novelty underpinning the Centre was a new kind of eco-partnership between
various actors. The local environmental administration and waste management, electricity
and public transport companies joined their environmental information services under the
same roof, expecting to gain synergies in spreading environmental information and changing
consumer behaviour in a more sustainable direction. This eco-partnership can be seen as the
first steps in reorganising public services in Tampere according to the ideas of New Public
Management. It has been feared that the change would reduce citizens to mere consumers, but
this does not seem to be the case. In the article I analyse the kinds of environmental citizenship
permitted by the eco-partnership. The institutionalised partnership organisation functions as
an umbrella facilitating different types of partnerships and allowing for different expressions
of active citizenship.