Social clean-up network

  • 2011-03-02
  • From wire reports

TALLINN - “Let’s Do It World 2012,” the big brother of the “Let’s Do It” movement that started in Estonia, is planning its contribution to the cleaning up of 100 million tons of illegal garbage around the world, reports Eesti Paevaleht. This is the call from the organizers of this project, with around 300 million people expected to give their own contribution to the clean-up effort.

For this goal to become reality, this year’s plan is to inform as many people as possible and find project initiators in different states. The organizers plan to hold 19 conferences across the world. The first of them will be in India in April, and the series will end with a global conference in Estonia in December this year or January next year.
The initiator of the plan, Rainer Nolvak, does not like to speak about conquering the world or destroying garbage. “That is not what we aim to do; we aim to bring people together,” said Nolvak. Over the past three years many states have become inspired by the “Let’s Do It” campaigns in Estonia. For example, last year 270,000 people worked to clean up Slovenia, which has nearly 2 million inhabitants.

In Estonia, the first event of the campaign brought together 50,000 people, in 2008, or 4 percent of the population and the initiators of the project think that this same share would suffice to clean up the world.
The project’s implementation requires the organizers to collect 1.1 million euros in cash. The state budget has already allocated nearly 64,000 euros and Estonian Air, EMT and the Foreign Ministry are also supporting the initiative.
On the home front, the fourth pan-Estonian community work day “Lets’ Do It” will take place on May 7 and focuses on people’s own initiatives. The chief organizer of the event this year, Tarmo Tuur, said that in three years, the situation has been achieved that everyone can look around and decide what needs to get done.

“No one [person] has to declare it, and we do not have only one theme anymore. We believe that the citizens’ society is active enough already,” said Tuur.

The organizers said that last year’s experience showed that many communities liked a combined day of cleaning up some target in the morning, and brainstorming about things that need to be solved in the afternoon.
The events can be registered at the movement’s homepage from the start of March. The campaign of registering participants starts on April 11. Last year 1,130 events were held on the “Let’s Do It” day and 31,299 people participated.