World Cleanup Day

Thankfully one of our goals in AIESEC is to raise awareness in people about the world’s problems in general. This is the reason why “world citizenship” is part of our Leadership Development Model, as not only do we try to see the world’s or other countries’ problems, but we are also keen to take action, in order to change the world even a little. 

Due to all these, we were eager to participate in 2021’s World Cleanup Day taking place on September 18th, Saturday.

We decided to clean Gellért Hill, as it is a highly visited tourist attraction in Budapest with many public spaces. During 4 hours of cleaning up, we managed to collect 20 bags of litter with the help of 29 participants from all over the city.

We went on the mission with the hope of collecting many big trash pieces, to make it fully visible how the place is not taken care of properly. But surprisingly there were not many huge problems, at first sight, we had to look closer. As we walked the pavements and the stairs the biggest problem we realized were the cigarette butts. There were thousands of pieces left next to the bin, in the bushes, or just randomly on the path. It took awfully long time to carefully pick each and every one of them. The learning point of this was very affecting every participant, that even though sometimes when you are having fun it doesn’t seem a big thing to throw away a little piece of cigarette, but when it comes to actually picking up it’s a mess. 

Another thing that stood out was all the trash thrown into the bushes and the trees. The place upper and deeper into the nature there were an insane amount of plastic bottles and glass bottles. 

Overall the experience got us pumped up to be good and act upon our values but really shocked us about how we are not taking care of the most beautiful things around us.

Be mindful, and take the extra step if you can to the next trash bin! It doesn’t cost you much, but it costs a lot for our environment!