17th September marks the celebration of World Clean Up Day 2022. Beginning in 2008, World Clean Up Day started in Estonia when 50,000 people gathered to clean up the entire country in just 5 hours. From its humble beginnings, World Clean Up Day has grown to huge proportions turning into a global movement that brings together the generations and anyone with time to spare. On this day, people unite to pick up litter and remove waste from beaches, rivers, forests and streets and anywhere in between, to make our home a better place, free from waste.
Today, World Clean Up Day is recognised across the globe, being celebrated across 191 countries and 60 million volunteers. It has grown to be one of the largest waste collection days, as last year alone saw 13.5 million volunteers taking part in the day, 81% of countries’ governments being involved and 53 million kilograms of waste being picked up.
World Clean Up Day is organised and overseen by Let’s Do It World, a global civic organisation that provides guidance and advice to all countries and anyone who is willing to commit to the cause of cleaning up the planet. Their philosophy centres around five core tenets: cooperation, positivity, leadership, technology, and fun. They desire to create a community of people, stepping up as leaders to cooperate with one another and have fun whilst making positive change. The movement towards making our planet more sustainable doesn’t have to be boring, or only achieved by governments and world leaders – anyone can take part and make a difference.
World Clean Up Day is a fantastic example of putting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals into action. It responds to multiple goals but three that stand out are goals 11, 12 and 17. Goal 11 calls to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. The UN recognises that ‘as cities grow, municipal solid waste problems mount’. As the earth’s population grows, so does production and waste. On the other side of this exists Goal 12: ‘Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns’. Production methods are unsustainable and create huge amounts of waste, alongside which the ‘COVID-19 pandemic aggravated the global pollution crisis, in particular plastics pollution’. As such, the earth is desperate for more sustainable production methods that are used to satisfy the needs of our growing population. Whilst these goals will seek to radically reform the way that cities operate to ensure that they exist as sustainable places with sustainable practices, World Clean Up day exists as an on the ground activity to remove the waste of old and clean the path towards a more sustainable future.
In conjunction with these two goals lies Goal 17: ‘Partnership for the goals.’ The key for achieving sustainability lies in togetherness with each goal working in accordance with one another. In the same way, at the heart of World Clean Up Day lies the prerequisite that people gather and work together to help bring about a cleaner planet. Sustainability can only happen when people are willing to work together, a core ethos of WWG as we believe in the power of holistic solutions in which all areas are used to work towards a better future.
In the spirit of working together, WWG has recently undertaken working alongside SGX. Singapore is renowned for being a key player in the sustainability world, as demonstrated by their Green Plan 2030 which exists as a ‘national sustainability movement which seeks to rally bold and collective action to tackle climate change’ and ‘strengthen Singapore’s commitments under the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda’. Singapore is now one of the most sustainable countries on the planet and is working incredibly hard to take concrete action towards the SDGs and we are thrilled to partner with them on their journey.
Singapore also takes part in World Clean Up Day, with one organisation taking the lead on this: Kindred. Kindred believes in the ‘mentality of taking action – not to benefit just oneself, but the community and the world we live in’. Kindred organises plenty of activities that you can take part in, such as the clean-up of Bedok town square that took place a few weeks ago. If you are based in Singapore, check out Kindred’s website to find out what activities are taking place that you can join in.
WWG shares Kindred belief in actions over words. We must be active in order to make sustainability more and more of a reality. World Clean Up Day offers a beautiful picture of partnership and how change comes about when people join with the common goal to help fix some of the issues facing our planet. If you want to get involved, check out the World Clean Up Day website to see what you can do to join in. Alternatively, why not grab a group or even go out by yourself and do something today to help clean up our planet and make our home a healthier place.
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