I was very surprised to learn that in Norway, there’s this whole structure in place for volunteer clubs (sport clubs, music clubs etc) to pick up litter along roads and in other places. It works like this: around Mid may, the snow melts and suddenly all the litter from the past winter becomes an eyesore. By then, clubs have applied to the county and they have been assigned an area to pick up litter. The county then picks up the litter bags and awards the clubs with a financial reward. The reward the clubs use in addition to their membership fees and their subsidy. Everybody wins.
I am currently trying to set up something similar in a part of the Netherlands. More in particular, around waterways. River litter is the main contributor to the plastic soup in the oceans, and that thought is a strong motivator for volunteer groups to help clean up what amounts to other peoples mess. Also, in the Netherlands, no-one was yet legally responsible for litter in rivers. Add in the financial reward for the volunteer groups, and that they can use this as a fundraiser/teambuilding exercise, and that government subsidies for such groups are currently dwindling, and all in all I think this model could really work. I have already tested it, and we got more volunteers then we had pieces of land/financial offers. Yay! In my project, the land owner pays the volunteers about 200 euros (300 dollars) for a clean up of 1-2 miles. That will take a group of ten people about half a day. Having it professionally cleaned is about twice as expensive, plus you don’t have the advantage of indirectly subsidizing the volunteers and creating awareness for the problem.
So my question is: how is litter pickup by volunteers (so, not by inmates, professionals) organized where you live?
Just one day where individual volunteers or groups can show up and get facilitated, but not paid?
Some property owners have working relations with volunteer groups, but out of their own initiative?
You have something like the Norway model and the model I’m trying to achieve? How is it organized? Who pays the money the volunteers get? The county? The property owner? Some higher up level governmet? What kind of money do the volunteers get?
From what I read in media reports in my state of Baden-Württemberg, south west Germany:
These events are referred to as Putzete (derived from putzen, to clean), and the volunteers are almost always unpaid - the organizers often lay on snacks of some kinds, other than that only supplies, planning and disposal are provided.
In several places I have lived, there are “Adopt-a-Road” programs where groups keep specific stretches of road clear of litter in return for having their names posted on signs. In Maryland, the state provides training, safety vests, and trash bags. There’s no monetary incentive.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation sponsors events for cleaning up along the shoreline of the bay. I recall similar events in Jacksonville, FL, along the St. Johns River, and I expect other areas have similar programs. Again, I’ve never heard of a monetary incentive. It’s all purely volunteer labor.
As a fellow (half-)Dutch person who grew up on a river, I just want to say: AWESOME! How do the volunteers actually get the rubbish out of the water? Just curious…
Interesting. Google led me to about 200 local Adopt-a-Road programs. Most say they have serveral hundred miles of road adopted out, and people clean it every other month. I’m surprised they find volunteers that way. So for some people, the good work and maybe the sign is enough of an incentive. But from what I know of psychology, I suspect that for other groups, more of an finacial incentive is needed. And then it becomes important that organizers don’t pay some groups and not others, otherwise the non-paid groups might feel unfairly treated. And that entails price-talks between counties/states. I wonder if I could find some overal report on how that system functions.
Our program “opruimloket”, Schone Maas (Clean Meuse)is just about cleaning the litter that remains on the winter bed of the river, after the high waters have receded and before the grass and nettles have grown too high. So, from end March to mid April.
This years try-out taught us that it is too difficult to let volunteers clean the banks of smaller rivers. Either too steep, or too inacessible, and just too risky.
In fact, as part of our program we want to introduce in the Netherlands, river litter traps. Those are a very new innovation, most have been tested for the last ten years or so. There are about ten places in the world where these have been introduced, and our province is going to be the next one. As I see it, you can’t expect volunteers to keep cleaning up and not show them that you’re doing your utmost to tackle the problem down the line.
We’re also busy to tackle the problem by law-enforcement. River litter is now nobodies legal responsibility, and that has to change. Just this spring, Dutch politics did good work by prohibiting microplastics in shampoos.
Thank you. Many countries have such a day. The Netherlands and Belgium, for instance. Usually in September, in association with the the World Keep it Clean-day. I think it is the easiest first step for policy makers to make.
But it does more for awareness then for picked up tonnage.
My city is on a river and we have such a day each spring. The publicize it so everyone knows the day. You can clean up your street, parkland or head down to the river. There is no financial incentive offered, though it gets lots of good publicity on the tv and in the paper. They get corporate support, teams from various companies take on such projects just as good works, ditto Boy Scout troops, girl guides, church groups, and high school kids looking to fill volunteer hour requirements, plus the college and university contribute a fair number of people, plus the normal service clubs like Rotarians, shriners, etc. it adds up to a lot of hands, in the end! I think the city contributes the bags and rakes maybe and trucks to haul it all away, I suppose.
Most of the towns around this city are also built on rivers, have similar events, structured also without financial incentive. People here would be curious to hear of such an arrangement, I think. But whatever it takes to get the whole thing rolling, is a great idea, regardless. Good on you for getting behind it!
It’s extremely effective here, everything is messy and littered when the snow melts, all that debris being blown around. And it gives people both ownership and investment in, the public spaces around them. You’re not going to litter in a place you pick up trash each spring, after all.
Interesting. So besides one day a year for the general public, they also have a adopt-a-road/park/waterway program. No financial incentive, just a placque and some facilitation.
Hmn. All these adopt-a-area programs have run for several years, right? I wonder what kind of numbers of volunteers they attract. Even if an coordinator within a group is idealistic enough to organize such a clean-up, my fear is that it must be harder and harder every year to get volunteers if the only incentive is “doing good”. I’ve done clean-ups myself and it is one of those things that you makes you think: " okay, I did it last year, its someone elses turn now".
Also, don’t the volunteers ask: why doesn’t the government/ property owner does the clean-up? Or is that an uniquely Dutch thing to ask?
Mops, thank you especially for those links on how my German neighbours do it. In my province, we have incoming rivers from both Germany and Belgium. The German river is much cleaner.
Yes, that is the same here. We have general litter clean-up days aimed at the general public, but those are mostly too late in the season for waterway clean up. Then we have days aimed at volunteer work in general, the environment/sustainbility in general, beaches in general. All dates we can use for publicity.
When we started out, I thought we would have to spend a lot of money on awareness of the general public. But since we decided to target existing groups, not the general public, we could save that trouble. A simple letter, written by the counties in our program, (from a template we provided) to the groups in the county, is a far more direct and efficient method. We have learnt to mail that letter in fall, so we’re in time for the groups annual members meeting and their activities-program for the next year.
We also have a website with a map of areas that need a group to adopt them and areas that are already adopted. That map allows volunteer groups to make their own choice. The map also makes it possible for property owners to get together with nearby owners.
One more question: Probably from TV, I have the image of groups of prison inmates doing litter clean up along highways. IN the US, doesn’t that make it harder for volunteers to clean up? I mean, if you’re in a safety vest doing cleanup along the road, and your nosy neighbour passes you in her car, how will she know you’re voluntarily doing good, and that you’re not doing community service time for your DUI?
In Canada, Earth Day is pretty big (where I live) in terms of schools, parents, businesses etc. getting involved. Hard to say what numbers are as there are no relevant statistics but, anecdotally, I can say that many neighborhoods and parks are filled with kids, youths and adults – it’s like a celebration and there’s always a sponsor at hand for coffee or juice. And it’s not just cleaning – it’s also planting trees and stuff so, yeah, people actually go out like it’s a holiday or something.
I live in a city on a major river, and we had a big organized river clean-up just last weekend. As usual, most of the trash they collected was tires.
We also have “Adopt A Highway” here, and people from this or that organization will go out periodically and pick up garbage. They do have to wear safety gear and go through an orientation where they learn about various types of hazardous waste, including identification of meth-making materials, and what to do if they find anything. And it can be ANY organization, too; there’s a road in the Springfield, MO area that’s kept clean by the National Socialist Party, AKA Nazis. :eek: It’s the road that goes by the mental institution where Jared Loughner was sent after he shot all those people in Tucson.
When I worked for Bell Labs in Princeton I did this. It was organized by the Telephone Pioneers, who got a sign. I’ve seen signs for other organizations and companies in California, as well as some families. You get all the stuff mentioned (you bring your own gloves) and do two miles of road every six months or so scheduled at your convenience.
I’ve never heard of pay - counties and cities have their own road crews to clean also. The volunteer work saves some money, and the volunteers probably do a better job just from having more hands. We usually worked early Sunday morning when there wasn’t so much traffic.
The first Saturday of May in Vermont is “Green Up Day.” Thousands of volunteers pick up trash/litter on roadways, bike paths, sidewalks, etc… all over the state. Special green trash bags are distributed to localities, volunteers get assigned to certain areas, and they fill the green bags with what they find.
Depending on where they’re cleaning, how that area is set up, they either bring the bags back to a certain area, or leave them on the side of the road and they get picked up later.
