Volunteers in
India collecting trash at the end of their cleanup. The Great Global Cleanup is just like it sounds. But organizers aim to make it more comprehensive this Earth Day with a “brand audit” and related attempts at two apparent world records. Earth Day falls on April 22. The Great Global Cleanup is turning five. EarthDay.org , the organizer of events across the globe, plans on registering 5,000 cleanups before the green holiday. Cleanups will take place throughout the month. Three of the largest, or flagship, events for the Great Global Cleanup are slated for
Malaysia, Armenia and
HAWAII. In Malaysia, with help from the Malaysian Humanitarian Foundation , organizers plan to mobilize more than 100,000 volunteers for a cleanup event and plant 1 million trees from April 19-23. It’s believed that 100,000-plus volunteers and 1 million trees would make for two world records, says Michael Karapetian, Great Global Cleanup coordinator based in Tampa,
Florida. Worldwide, about 2,000 cleanups have been registered so far, including all 50 U.S. states. The goal of 5,000 events is typical for the Great Global Cleanup, and EarthDay.org hopes to have 192 countries represented this year, the same as last year. The cleanups range from huge ones like the flagship events to smaller projects involving communities, neighborhoods, streets and
Friends. Anyone can register a cleanup . “We like to call it the gateway drug to the environmental movement, because it’s easy to do, you don’t really need anything but your hands,” although gloves and bags are encouraged, Karapetian says. “It’s really easy to get involved with. What we find is that once people start doing cleanups, they start to realize how bad the situation is.” That situation has a lot to do with plastic pollution, and Earth Day events this year are in concert with advocacy for a Global Plastics Treaty that includes a 60% reduction in plastic production by 2040. EarthDay.org will be posting diary updates from treaty negotiations, which are next taking place in Ottawa, Ontario, just after Earth Day. As for the world records: What is the largest-ever cleanup event? And the most trees planted in five days? Guinness World Records lists the largest annual international coastal cleanup project as the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup on Sept. 21, 2019, with more than 940,000 volunteers from 116 countries. The most trees planted in 24 hours by a team in a single location equals 847,275, back in 2013, according to the organization. Either way, the Great Global Cleanup remains ambitious, organizers say, with this year’s plans for Malaysia. In its first four years, volunteers in the Great Global Cleanup removed a total of 160 million pounds of trash, the group says. Cleanup volunteers in the UAE picking up trash off of a beach. This year, cleanup leaders also will start logging brands that they find on beaches, along roadsides and elsewhere. They call it “trash as evidence.” Groups and others who do registered cleanups for the great global event will be asked to take the extra step of sorting and cataloging plastics by brand. “The whole idea is to be able to create this evidence of trash and then to open up this dialogue with companies to make real change,” Karapetian says.
New York is suing PepsiCo Inc. for single-use plastics found along the Buffalo River, for example. If a company’s name is on a piece of plastic, he argues, that company needs to help figure out how to solve the problem of plastic pollution, with or without a treaty. “We do have to turn off that tap. If we don’t get that reduction, we’re going to be doing cleanups for the rest of our lives.”