Garbage day in Estonia

TURI- As reported by The Moscow Times, tens of thousands of Estonianscould be seen in  fields, streets,forests and riverbanks to collect garbage and junk to commemorate the firstnational day of cleanup.

Using Google Maps to mark trash sites on the Internet and global positioningtechnology to locate the junk on the ground, Estonians collected everythingfrom tractor batteries to plastic bottles and paint tins Saturday and broughtit, often in their own cars, to central dumps.

The campaign, which aimed to collect up to 10,000 tons of garbage, wasorganized by Internet entrepreneurs. "It is not really about the rubbish.It is about changing people's mind-sets. Next year, it might be somethingelse," said Tiina Urm, spokeswoman for the event.

Estoniahad a large of garbage after it independence in 1991, but it the problem hasgotten worse. "It has to be done, it can't stay here," said Mats Eek,17, cleaning up a site in the middle of a forest near Turi, 100 kilometers fromTallinn. Whatwill happen to the trash after garbage dumps have been overfilled? One entrepreneuris thinking green and suggests the garbage be used for fuel. Recycling is alsoslowly becoming more and more popular, as the government also initiated a recyclingprogram nationwide.