Throughout the Netherlands, volunteers are busy cleaning up litter during the twentieth edition of the National Clean-up Day. The organization assumes that many thousands of people are busy with a prod and a garbage bag.
“It makes a difference anyway”, says Grietje Loof of IVN Nature Education at RTV Drenthe† According to her, the big clean-up not only leads to less litter, but also raises awareness.
Loof started working with a group of twenty children in a park in Hoogeveen this week. “They are children from the area, they also play here. With what they have seen today they might think: ‘Hey, it would be nice if we clean up a bit more often'”.
The National Clean-up Day is an idea of Nederland Schoon, a collaboration of all kinds of organizations and companies such as the Plastic Soup Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, but also Sportvisserij Nederland and ‘sponsors’ such as Coca Cola, Febo, Zeeman and Mars.
Cleaner than ever
This year there is a special role for Gouda. That city has been around for 750 years and is trying to mobilize the population in a hundred places to participate in the clean-up campaign. “We want to get Gouda cleaner than ever in one day”, thus Councilor Michel Klijmij-van der Laan. “From the city center to the suburbs. Every resident can participate. Cleaning the city together fits perfectly with the party theme: Pass on Gouda.”
In Brunssum, Limburg, the entire college of mayor and aldermen takes to the streets, together with the residents. And in Zeeland, waste is cleared up on the banks of the Scheldt at low tide.
Plastic-free terraces
As with previous editions of the National Clean-up Day, people are called upon to photograph the most common troop, so that the origin can be traced. Last year, for example, it turned out that a lot of waste in the canals in Leiden came from the catering industry.
“That is why we have started the project together with other parties for plastic-free terraces in the city centre,” says Leiden scientist Auke-Florian Hiemstra. then† “To reduce it that way at the source.”
In Amsterdam, two professional floating waste fishermen from Waternet give tips for the National Clean-up Day:
–
