Letaa‚¬a„¢s Do It, Romania! starts countdown to country clean-up

Clean the whole country – in a single day! is the slogan with which Let’s Do It, Romania! wants to encourage as many people as possible to contribute to improving the environment. Inspired by the project that successfully turned Estonia into a waste-free country in 2008, thousands of Romanians have spent thousands of hours accomplishing one of Romania’s biggest community projects so far, that of restoring the natural beauty of landscapes that have been blighted by garbage for too long.

Corina Dumitrescu

Things have evolved since our last review on Let’s Do It, Romania! this March. September 25, 2010, is a date that set to make history, as Romania’s own national cleaning day. But behind this one-day project has been a collective year-long effort from an estimated 15,000 volunteers (and counting), to which is added the support of local environmental (and not only) NGOs, the authorities, media, as well as Romanian businesspeople and inspiring public figures.

The idea behind the project came from the Let’s Do It 2008 campaign in Estonia, which, on May 3, 2008, managed to bring together 50,000 volunteers, 4 percent of a population of 1.3 million, with locals being joined by people from all over the world in the initiative. Described by international media as one of the most ambitious volunteer actions in modern times, the project was also a very efficient country branding campaign for Estonia, all for the cost of EUR 500,000 and with the priceless result of getting an entire country clean in just one day. More information about the campaign in Estonia is available on YouTube, through a search for Country Clean-Up Project Let’s Do It 2008.

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In Romania, the foundations for the project were laid in 2009, when Liana Buzea of Asociatia Ecoasist, an environmental NGO, contacted the Let’s Do It team from Estonia. Momentum then spread from Bucharest across the country, says Anamaria Hancu, coordinator of the communication team. She attributes the need for the project to the fact that “in Romania, there are many NGOs or authorities that have organized individual or collective cleaning activities, which only resolved the problem of waste blighting natural spaces temporarily. What’s more, Romania also has a problem with its waste management system, which needs to be improved.” So Romania became part of the Let’s Do It, World! community and joined the other countries organizing clean-up campaigns this January, in Talinn, at a conference organized by the Estonian team.

Let’s Do It, Romania! has so far comprised three main stages, organizing, mapping and cleaning. Across the country, the organizing team consists of around 200 volunteers, with the mapping team reaching about 2,500 registered individuals. The mapping phase of the campaign involved identifying and describing the so-called waste piles, as well as sending their coordinates via GPS to help create a digital map of the areas. The cleaning part, the campaign’s most important component, is currently being finalized, gathering volunteers. Pilot clean-ups have already been staged, with three pilot counties now waste-free (Cluj, Arges and Timis), 5,100 volunteers involved and 300 tons of garbage collected. So far, Hancu estimates a total of 15,000 participants in all of the project’s stages and a total investment of between EUR 55,000 and EUR 60,000, as a result of both sponsors’ and volunteers’ contributions.

And how will a project of such proportions fare on its big day, September 25? “In the morning, volunteers, previously notified via e-mail, will come for the cleaning at the meeting points corresponding to the counties that they are in (usually, at town or city halls). Participants will be trained, will afterwards receive sacks and gloves and then set off on the route of their choice (if they have previously registered online on www.letsdoitromania.ro and have already chosen piles), along with the team that they have formed. If they are not yet part of a team, they come to the information point that morning, find all the necessary information and are allocated to a team,” Hancu explains.

The project is currently in full development and would not have managed to achieve such a level of involvement, had it not been for the support it proved able to attract from local state authorities, the media, NGOs and public figures. The main partner in the project is the Ministry of Environment, which provided consulting support on waste management issues. The Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism facilitates relations with local authorities from touristic locations and helps by involving their partners, says Hancu.

“Of great help will be the involvement of the Ministry of Education and Research, especially

from September 15. We really need the participation of children on September 25,” adds Hancu. There is no need to underline, however, that at the heart of the initiative lies

the involvement of volunteers from around the country, dedicating their time to a goal considered too challenging by many before them.

As for what the future holds, after September 25, the next stage of the project will consist of lobbying, with the authorities applying sanctions for waste disposal in unmarked areas, the legal framework will be completed and the gradual improvement of the waste management system will begin.

A television spot inviting volunteers to participate in the project will be aired on Monday,

August 30. The spot is also available for viewing on YouTube, on Let’s Do It, Romania!’s official channel. More information about the project, how to join or simply offer your support, is available on the local site, www.letsdoitromania.ro, as well as the global one, www.letsdoitworld.org.