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Around 50 million volunteers in 180 countries collected litter from riversides, beaches and forests on World Cleanup Day.
Each year, eight million tonnes of plastic end up in the oceans, which are also where 70% of the world’s oxygen is generated.
In Rome on Saturday, dozens of volunteers filled bags with seemingly endless amounts of trash along the Tiber.
“We were brought up that way,†said one of the young volunteers. “We see with climate change and global warming, it’s all going south, so I think it’s time for #we all to commit to start the real action.”
“The elderly can make policies, we will act,” said Tara Angelika Svetlin, filling another bag.
In Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, volunteers cleaned up the city’s walks and parks on Saturday.
They also picked up trash from the slopes of Mount Trebevic, which overlooks the capital and was used for several events during the 1984 Winter Olympics.
The World Cleanup Day website reveals which regions of Europe were most excited on Saturday: Germany topped the list, with over 900 registered events, France over 600 and Italy over 500.
But the website also revealed that residents of Cyprus, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Romania, Slovenia and Ukraine had not recorded any events.
In other parts of the world, the stakes were even greater. in South Africa, like the Tiber, the banks of the Jukskei are littered with rubbish.
It passes through the impoverished township of Alexandra, in the economic capital of South Africa, Johannesburg.
But the sewage-ravaged river must also be a source of drinking water for people who still have not been supplied with running water in their homes.
The volunteers’ bags quickly filled up on Saturday. Local organizers said their ultimate goal was to persuade residents that it was possible to clean the river well enough to make it drinkable.
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