How can we help the planet with a small gesture? Let’s find out together! Do you know the clean walk? It’s a green walk that consists in collecting and sorting a maximum of waste. Running, walking, alone or with a group, there is something for everyone.
Clean walk and Plogging : on your way, collect the waste !
In the street we find everything: tissues, plastic cigarette butts, leaflets, glass bottles… The “Clean Walker” movement consists in federating all the energies around a project that affects everyone and generate a collective awareness of the waste problem. The goal is to clean everything, to depollute a site cluttered with waste and to leave the place where you are even cleaner than it was when you arrived. Participating in a clean walk is : making a concrete gesture for the environment, sharing a moment of conviviality, participating in a solidarity and citizen initiative. You don’t need to have a lot of means, you just need a pair of gloves and a bag. The most present waste : cigarette butts. Some bars or restaurants even offer a coffee or a pancake in exchange for a bottle filled with cigarette butts!
Some people also practice “Plogging“, this term is a mix between plocka up which means to pick up and the word jogging. It consists in maintaining yourself while doing something for the environment. Collecting waste found on the ground while running, nothing better to act on the planet while doing sports. These citizen initiatives are spreading more and more on social networks. Indeed, to raise awareness and mobilize a maximum of people, pictures are posted showing places before and after cleaning. These photos spread very quickly and encourage the creation of new “Clean Walk” around the world.
Understanding the Clean Walk in 3 minutes
World clean up day : a day to serve the planet
The World CleanUp Day was founded in 2008 by Let’s Do It Foundation. This movement consists in collecting the waste of a country during one day. It has now spread to 156 countries and has mobilized 17.7 million citizens ten years later. The goal of this day: to avoid the proliferation of litter and to awaken a sense of responsibility towards the impact of the nuisance it causes.
France had its first edition in 2018. During this day, 200,000 people were mobilized and 3,000 clean ups were organized. Result of the day: 600T of waste collected, including 220T of reusable waste and 10 million cigarette butts. For its second edition, which took place on September 21, 2019, 265,000 people participated in a total of 400 operations on the French territory.
Clean Up dive : the sea is also polluted !
It is not only on the roads that we can act… The sea is also polluted by everyday waste. Marine debris is not only unsightly, it is also dangerous for marine life and very dangerous for human health. Marine animals become entangled in debris and even mistake it for food, often with fatal results. In addition, divers, swimmers and beachgoers can be directly injured by encounters with marine debris or its toxins. The environmental damage caused by plastic debris alone is estimated at $13 billion per year. To solve this problem, it is possible to go scuba diving, which is called “CleanUp Dive”. To protect the underwater environment, the association Project Aware was created at the end of the 80s. Since the launch of its program, more than 50,000 divers have participated and collected more than one million pieces of waste.
