Organisation: NAJU Hamburg 

Website: www.naju-hamburg.de

Dates: 17 September 2016

Place: Hamburg, Germany

Description of the activity:

With our project we participated to the International Coastal Cleanup Day. We organised a day with workshops and collected waste at the beach of Elbe river. 70 young people under 27 helped us to clean up a part of our urban nature. Besides, we learned interesting facts about "Zero Waste Life", political and economic interests and conflicts on Elbe, plastic waste in oceans and rivers, upcycling and an alternative recycling system from experts. The evening passed with vegetarian food and guitar music at the bonfire.

What was the environmental problem:

Waste in our oceans and rivers is a huge environmental problem. We want to make people aware of it and change something. Our mission is to give young people a voice and show them that everyone can help solving the problem.

The environmental problem involving plastic is huge: a plastic bottle needs 400 years to decompose, up to 100.000 sea mammals and 1 million birds die every year because of plastic waste and 8 million tons of waste end up in the sea every year. The Elbe leads into the North Sea and is one of Hamburg's most frequented destinations to relax or take a walk. A lot of people leave their waste in the sand instead of dispose it into the next dustbin. Because of all these facts we needed to react and make people aware of the problems.

The result of the activity:

Together with 70 people we collected 78 kilograms waste along 1.2 kilometres riverbank. A lot of pedestrians saw our campaign and got aware of all the trash left at the beach. They asked us a lot of questions and some of them even started to help us. With our Coastal Cleanup Day we could change the mindset of many young people. We showed them a whole new environmental friendly lifestyle. We are proud to tell that we could make a whole weekend, the Coastal Cleanup Camp, out of it this year in September.

Environmental challenge accepted - Public vote

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