Earth Day!

Hello everyone! Today (22nd of April) is Earth Day and I celebrated it by participating in the national cleaning campaign called "Roll up your sleeves!". It was organized at over 150 locations in my country, 60 of which were in Belgrade, and I was at one of them. This event is happening for the 10th time, and it was my second time to participate as volunteer. This time it was organized at the same time in all locations, from 12h to 14h. I found a location near my apartment, took gloves, and I was ready to go. It's very sad to see how much garbage there is, but also it's nice to see a lot of people coming to clean, even with kids, and helping to clean the country. This time, action was probably the biggest so far, with 5–8000 people that participated.

Cleaning is harder than it looks

Even though at first look, it doesn't seem like there is a lot of garbage, once you start there is no end to it. A lot of garbage is just covered with dirt and plants. Cleaning is harder than it looks. You have to be careful, gloves are not resistant to everything and dealing with syringes, broken glass, and similar, can be very dangerous. Also, many things are hard to separate and dig. There was one big nylon bag, that took three of us to get from the dirt and roots of a tree.

In my spot there were so many snails I was very surprised. There were many snail's houses also, and at the end of action, I took some as souvenir and reminder of this day. I didn't take too many photos as I was rather focused to clean as much as I can in those 2 hours, and taking photos was taking too much time since I had to take off my gloves first, and put them back again. At first look there is not too much garbage, but once you start, the possibilities of what you can find are almost endless. Some of the craziest finds today were pieces of a toilet, probably, and 5-6 glass bottles that were buried perfectly next to each other.

100 bags of garbage less in the nature

And here is the result, about 100 bags of garbage less in the nature. On our location, one of 150, and probably not the worst one. It's crazy to even think of the amount of garbage collected in this day, and also devastating knowing it will take who knows how much more actions to clean the country, or get it better. I try to be eco-friendly as I can, but before, I used to think that it's foolish to collect other people's trash, kind of humiliating. I grow from that thinking, and realized I would rather be a fool doing something good for others and nature, than a fool that has no upbringing and conscience, and throws that trash. "Hating others is not patriotism, patriotism is when you collect other people's trash."

Lead photo and photos included in the article are original and mine.

Thank you for reading my post ^^