Cleaning up the country
Sławek Brzózek is the director of Our Earth Foundation, which coordinates the annual Clean Up Poland campaign. He can be e-mailed at slawek@naszaziemia.pl.
Among the most valuable archaeological sites are ancient garbage dumps, for it is from them that we find out the most about customs and lifestyles of societies under study.
We can rest assured that archaeologists of the future will have no shortage of data on present society: human history has never known trash dumps as great as the ones we produce. It's a pity then that one of the conclusions archaeologists will draw from the dumps may turn out to be that we failed to be economical, to use natural resources with moderation and to be responsible for ourselves, our planet and our descendants.
This may be so, but it is not inevitable. For many years successful educational campaigns have been undertaken here as well as abroad in order to draw attention to the "garbage problem," to promote waste management and to support local authorities and businesses in implementing programs to combat it.
One of the programs assisting in this endeavor is Clean Up Poland, part of the global Clean Up the World campaign, which will take place in this country for the tenth time this year in September. It was started here by Mira Stanisławska-Meysztowicz, a Pole who resided in Australia for many years, the country where the global campaign was originally initiated. She founded the Our Earth Foundation to coordinate the campaign.
Clean Up the World is a public environmental education activity that goes way beyond mere "garbage collection," as its name suggests. Though the campaign takes place on the third weekend of September here, its purpose is not merely to clean up once a year, but to conduct permanent activities to improve the condition of the environment. The most important objective is to increase Poles' awareness of environmental issues and to make them more environmentally friendly and responsible for their daily decisions by stimulating social activites geared toward solving the problems related to waste management.
The last campaign on Sept. 20-22, 2002, was conducted under the slogan "Recycling - It Pays." Its scale was similar to that of previous years. We estimate that some 1.5 million people from more than 1,400 towns and villages took part. More than 2,300 local committees organized garbage collections, garbage sorting, collections of recyclable materials and recycling activities in their communities. Festivals, concerts, and the inaugurations of long-term ecological education schemes accompanied the event.
The most important task of last year's campaign was to promote the benefits of recycling. The data collected suggests that 67% of the participants already recycled their waste. This was a much larger figure than in previous years: in 2001, it was 60%; in 2000, 52%; and in 1999, 30%. More than 53% of participants said that their gminas had garbage selection schemes, while a further 18% were aware of plans to introduce them.
During the campaign more than 25,000 tons of trash were collected, while more than 15,000 tons of segregated recyclables were handed over for reuse. Such results represent a great success for Clean Up Poland, which has propagated waste segregation since 1994. It is also a great success for the entire society, which has shown its ability and willingness to cope with this particular challenge to our civilization. Futhermore, it is a positive sign that most of the participants are young people, which allows for hope that soon the habits and awareness of the necessary respect for the environment will be a standard in our society.
More and more gminas are now introducing integrated systems of selective garbage collection and recycling. Clean Up Poland is a perfect opportunity to conduct training courses that demonstrate how to segregate waste and to initiate long-term educational campaigns. That is what happened in the town of Dopiewo in Wielkopolska, where children showed their parents how to segregate waste. Such games and family events are often good opportunities to start segregation programs in municipalities, at home or at school. The campaign also helps to stimulate social awareness, as was the case in Szwecja (in the seaside Zachodniopomorskie region), where the pupils of a primary school asked the authorities for assistance in initiating selective garbage collection, received it and started segregating trash. This is what has been happening in many places around the country.
Every day we see our streets, lawns and forests covered with waste of various sorts - that is a fact. But from the perspective of nine years, it is possible to see progress in the resolution of the "garbage problem." In the mid-1990s, mass participation in our campaign was a valuable argument in favor of Our Earth Foundation and other ecological organizations lobbying for a new parliamentary act on nature protection. The result was an act on clean environment maintenance in gminas that was passed in 1996. Now, from year to year, the participants report a decreasing amount of garbage collected and a gradual change in the habits of their local communities, where people are now less likely to throw their trash in illegal dumps and more likely to segregate waste.
The adoption of a new series of laws beginning in autumn 2001, which introduced high standards in nature management, opened a new chapter in environmental protection. They also set challenges for all those who are the final users of the environment - citizens, entrepreneurs and educators. In this context, it is worth stressing the importance of non-governmental organizations. They enjoy great esteem in society and make serious partners for businesses by reconciling global challenges with local needs. There are more than 6,000 environmental NGOs in this country.
Besides its success here, Clean Up Poland has participated in activities abroad. Last year the Our Earth Foundation together with Polish Humanitarian Action (PAH) conducted Clean Up the World campaigns in Afghanistan and Chechnya, where PAH has operations. There were similar projects in Ukraine and Belarus. The campaign Clean Home - Clean Belarus had 306 participants who cleaned up 8.5 tons of trash and collected 284 kilograms of recyclable materials. It was inspired by the Our Earth Foundation and organized by local NGOs.
For many years, Poland's Clean Up the World campaign has been deemed the best organized one worldwide by the organization's headquarters in Sydney. Thus it is not only ski-jumping in which the country is foremost. In 2002, the Clean Up Poland campaign yet again found public recognition when it received an award in the prestigious Pro Publico Bono competition. Stanisławska-Meysztowicz was also awarded with the Polonia Restituta Cross by President Aleksander Kwaśniewski and the International Order of Smile, which is given by children. In previous years, Clean Up Poland received the Green Leaf award from the environment minister and the Ford Foundation's Nature's Conservation Award.
