It all started in 2008 - overall 50 thousand participants, 364 municipalities and over 260 thousand bags of litter collected. These are results from The Big Cleanup in Latvia first year. The idea of the Big Cleanup belongs to the writer Anna Žīgure. The project is based on voluntary participation to keep our environment tidy, bring people together and promote positivism and satisfaction with the achievements. But I have to say that this idea doesn't belong to Latvians, Anna just was the one was inspired from our neighbour country Estonia, situated in northern Europe and it all started at the autumn of 2007.
All the good things are from the Baltic States
"The idea was born in a conversation between few friends who realized that the roots of the massive illegal dumping habit lie in the lack of responsibility on every level. Things needed to get turned around for the better.
There and then the 'one day, one country' concept was born. Instead of dividing the efforts over an extended period of time, it was time to act now and act together! Co-operation throughout the whole society - involving the state, NGO-s, private enterprises and vast number of active citizens, united the nation and on 3rd of May 2008 more than 50 000 people and hundreds of organizations together cleaned more than 10 000 tons of illegal garbage from the territory of Estonia.
From there, neighboring countries Latvia and Lithuania decided to join in and since then, more and more brave and inspired people from different countries have decided to make it happen for themselves and their people."
President Valdis Zatlers Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis
The Big Cleanup in Latvia
Latvia’s first Great Cleanup day was September 13, 2008, as the country prepared for the celebration of the 90th anniversary of its independence in November. Some 50,000 volunteers spent the day picking up litter and otherwise cleaning up the environment. They carried some 13,000 tonnes of domestic waste out of the country’s forests and parks.
"In the spring of 2009, Latvia initiated an even broader cleanup movement in the Baltic Sea region. The project was organised simultaneously in Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and St Petersburg, Russia, with varying degrees of activity in these various locations. In Latvia, some 110,000 volunteers spent the day cleaning up their neighbourhoods all over the country. The activities were organised by more than 800 co-ordinators, and huge numbers of people took part as individual volunteers.
The 3rd annual Latvia's Great Cleanup project started on April 24. Overall 150 000 people in Latvia took part in the voluntary campaign. This year the theme was culture. The patron of the Great Cleanup, as always, was one of its most fervent supporters – Latvia’s President Valdis Zatlers. He and his family was in the South-East of Latvia, helping to clean up the banks of the Daugava River near the town of Skrīveri.
The Great Cleanup project (known as Lielā Talka in Latvian) is co-ordinated by a central team and 120 regional co-ordinators. People have used an interactive map on the Internet to register more than 1,150 places in the country which require some attention – parks, yards, riverbanks, public forests and specific areas along the seaside. Local municipalities, waste management companies, groups of activists, schools, organisations and institutions will all join together to make Latvia a cleaner, greener, and better place to live.
This volunteerism is one of the most outstanding features of the Great Cleanup. The huge amount of garbage that has been collected each time, sadly enough shows that even after nearly 20 years of independence, Latvia and its capital city of Rīga still have “scars” from the Soviet era – abandoned factories, industrial waste, and a polluted environment which remains an eyesore in so many different locations. This is due, in large part, to the ongoing carelessness and lack of responsibility of some people for the environment in which they live. The cleaner our country and our neighbouring countries will become, the cleaner we will all want to be. Surely that is something that applies to every country in Europe.
Latvia is pleased to have become a source of inspiration for many other countries which have instituted Great Cleanup projects since Latvia’s first one in September 2008. Latvian activists applaud their fellow cleanup enthusiasts in European countries such as Estonia, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Italy and Ukraine, as well as further abroad in places such as India, Costa Rica, Australia and Brazil. Activists in Latvia are monitoring the spread of the Great Cleanup idea, and they hope that someday there might be a universal effort on this planet to make it a better, greener, and cleaner place for future generations," was said on latest press release, which I got from the Big Cleanup organizers.
Statistics: Three years of Big Cleanup in Latvia.
13 September 2008:
- about 50 thousand participants
- 364 municipalities involved in the cleanup
- over 260 thousand bags of litter collected
18 April 2009:
- about 110 thousand participants
- 392 municipalities, 269 schools, 161 companies and organisations and 12 universities involved in the cleanup
- over 340 60-litre bags of litter collected
24 April 2010:
- about 150 thousand participants
- over 3500 tons of litter collected