Over 150,000 volunteers take part in national cleanup campaign

Around 150,000 local volunteers cleaned Romania last Saturday, within the Let's Do It Romania local program. The volunteers collected 200,000 bags of garbage from out of town areas in Romania. Sponsorships for the project, some EUR 30,000 in total, covered the cost of bags, gloves for the volunteers, as well as the free transport of the garbage. Some of the volunteers, however, also contributed with bags, gloves and garbage transport to the nearest landfill. Before the event, the organizers had expected 200,000 people to show up and start cleaning the country, and were hoping to remove 20,000 tonnes of garbage. As many as 74,000 volunteers had signed up on the event's website prior to the event, but the number of those having showed up on site was double. Over 6,000 trash piles have been identified countrywide so far. However, no cleanup is needed in some areas in counties like Cluj, Suceava and Salaj. Just like the initial actions in Estonia, the country which started the initiative, organized in 2008, and the ones in Latvia in 2009, the action in Romania involves citizens, local authorities, private firms, cleaning operators, public figures and mass-media in order to get people to clean the waste and make citizens more responsible regarding the environment. romania-insider.com