Artigenda
World Cleanup Day
When: Annually, September.
Every year, a day in September is dedicated to World Cleanup Day. The day is a global event for a better living environment.
Origin
The day has existed since 2008 and 197 countries now participate in World Cleanup Day. The first edition was held in Estonia at the time. It would later grow into a global event, thanks to the help of the United Nations.
First official version
After the first time in 2008, it took a while before the first official version of this day was organised. That was happened in 2018. In 2012 and 2014, attempts were made to organise large-scale clean-up actions in places other than Estonia. In each case, the similarity with the 2008 Estonian action was then that different people worked together in the process.
In 2012, they attempted Slovenia. Yet they still had to wait until 2018, when the official kick-off of World Cleanup Day took place in Fiji. Incidentally, the action lasted longer than 24 hours. When the action ended in Samoa, 36 hours had passed. An estimated 18 million volunteers from 157 countries took part in this action in 2018. A year later, the action was followed up.
2020, the digital version
In 2020, everything was different, because of the corona pandemic. Therefore, World Cleanup Day that year was also different. It became a digital version. That’s special, because how do you do something like that?
The 2020 edition coincided with another event, Earth Day, which was on 22 April. A year later, there were still restrictive measures in many countries and therefore it was not possible to bring many people together. Therefore, it was also decided to have a modified programme. As in 2020, it was therefore decided to adapt the 2021 edition. The focus became mainly on individual actions and online activities in the form of education. In 2021, a relationship was established with the Let’s Do It World’s Annual Conference. This was a virtual conference attended by 2,500 people. 9 million people nevertheless participated in the 2021 clean-up campaign on an individual basis. A year later, 14 million people took part in the action.
More information
There’s more information available on the website of World Cleanup Day: worldcleanupday.org.
