ABOUT

Background

Most people have heard about the global waste problem. But only reducing waste emissions and improving waste management won’t solve the problem of existing trash.

Much of our waste problem is directly linked to habits. Over time, we have also developed “Trash Blindness” – being so used to trash around us that we don’t even notice it any more.

Cleanup events have been organised for decades, but without having any significant impact on the global scale. Events are organised separately, communication is scattered and often dissolved in information overdose. To have a significant impact, it is crucial to engage a critical mass of people to start the process of change in our societies.

The World Cleanup Day 2018 event was established to show people how much impact their actions have and to motivate them to reevaluate their habits. Our goal was to organize one single global event and bring all the people and organizations of the world together under the one meaningful brand – World Cleanup Day.



Cultural context

World Cleanup Day is a global action that must consider all possible regional implications that might exist in the world.

There are a lot of different issues with free speech and media regulations. There are countries where public gatherings are prohibited. There are societies where grassroot activities are considered anti-governmental and participants can pe persecuted. There are countries at war and those with political unrest. And there are a huge number of municipalities where any activist is seen as a troublemaker who makes problematic topics publicly visible.

In addition to social and political complexities, there were harsh weather conditions, geological activities, and situations where any outdoor activity could be hazardous.

We had to deal with trash blindness, ignorance, traditional biases, competitive activities and disbelief that any climate action is necessary at all.



Creative Idea

One world. One day. One purpose – everyone cleans the planet.
It has never been so easy to have a global impact!

Instead of emphasizing the point of how everyone needs to rearrange their everyday lives, we focused on how easy it is to create an impact. We aimed to show that humanity can join together to create a better tomorrow. Its beauty lies in empowering people worldwide to accomplish something extraordinary through cooperation: building bridges between generations, disparate communities, and including all levels of society - from citizens, to business, to government.

This way it was also a call-to-action to political leaders, policy makers and enterprises - to shift from an inefficient waste-producing society in which waste is accepted as the norm, into an efficient and resource-conscious one.






The Strategy



Our most crucial challenge was to gain necessary momentum with the help of technology, cooperation, and communication.

Roots of World Cleanup Day lay in Estonia – country that has been recognized as Silicon Valley of Europe – birthplace of Skype, Bolt, TransferWise and many others.

We approached the task as if we are a start-up company that needs to scale up quickly on international markets. For this we created a scalable model that can easily used to launch clean-up events and communication all over the world on very different scales and in very diverse cultural contexts.

We understood that we did not have enough power to launch a global central marketing campaign with an almost non-existing budget. For this, we established a crowdsourcing culture where everyone is encouraged to share their marketing ideas and improve each other’s work.

For the event we set up independent communication teams and found inspiring leaders in 150 countries to lead nationwide cleanups while empowering, mentoring and supporting local volunteers. With their collective knowledge and contacts, we managed to establish a well-functioning network all over the world.

It was just as critical to find partner organisations as stakeholders whose own leadership and networks could merge with ours.



Execution

We established the World Cleanup Day marketing toolbox and encouraged everyone in our network to come up with suitable marketing ideas for their region. We kept as few rules as possible to give cultural and creative freedom.

2 months prior to World Cleanup Day 2018 volunteers mapped world waste hotspots with our custom-built mobile application. This helped country leaders to assign cleanup teams and create a waste management strategy – often in areas where it has never been done before.

On September 15th, almost 18 MILLION people from 157 COUNTRIES cleaned the world while avoiding cold, heat, thunderstorms and law enforcement in areas, where public gatherings are prohibited. Even countries at war (like Syria) launched their Cleanup Day activities.

We tracked the events across the world in real time while giving extra assistance and know-how to people whose actions took place in challenging weather conditions or political situations.



The impact

World Cleanup Day directly fulfills the requirements of at least 9 of the 17 United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

We were not only successful in mobilizing millions of people to act and deal with one of the most complex challenges in the world, waste pollution, but we were also uniting partners across all sectors to act together. We emphasized that a clean environment is fundamental to tackle health issues, poverty, and climate change. To maintain life on land and below the sea we must consume and produce responsibly to create less waste.

World Cleanup Day 2018 was the single biggest peaceful civic action in human history. In 2020 World Cleanup Dy will take place already for a 3rd time.



Notable recognitions

UN Prize on Education for Sustainable Development
World Summit award on Mobile application for Environment and Green Energy.
3 Gold prizes and one Silver in the National Festival of Creativity.