Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EARTHDAY.ORG including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries. The official theme for 2023 is Invest In Our Planet.
Litter consists of waste products that have been discarded incorrectly, without consent, at an unsuitable location. The word litter can also be used as a verb: to litter means to drop and leave objects, often man-made, such as aluminum cans, paper cups, food wrappers, cardboard boxes or plastic bottles on the ground, and leave them there indefinitely or for other people to dispose of as opposed to disposing of them correctly.
Keep America Beautiful is a nonprofit organization founded in 1953. It is the largest community improvement organization in the United States, with more than 700 state and community-based affiliate organizations and more than 1,000 partner organizations.
The Great Pacific garbage patch is a garbage patch, a gyre of marine debris particles, in the central North Pacific Ocean. It is located roughly from 135°W to 155°W and 35°N to 42°N. The collection of plastic and floating trash originates from the Pacific Rim, including countries in Asia, North America, and South America.
The Adopt-a-Highway program, and the very similar Sponsor-a-Highway, are promotional campaigns undertaken by U.S. states, provinces and territories of Canada, and some national governments outside North America to encourage volunteers to keep a section of a highway free from litter. In exchange for regular litter removal, an organization is allowed to have its name posted on a sign in the section of the highways they maintain.
Ocean Conservancy is a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States. The organization seeks to promote healthy and diverse ocean ecosystems, prevent marine pollution, climate change and advocates against practices that threaten oceanic and human life.
Litter in the United States is an environmental issue and littering is often a criminal offense, punishable with a fine as set out by statutes in many places. Litter laws, enforcement efforts, and court prosecutions are used to help curtail littering. All three are part of a "comprehensive response to environmental violators", write Epstein and Hammett, researchers for the United States Department of Justice. Littering and dumping laws, found in all fifty United States, appear to take precedence over municipal ordinances in controlling violations and act as public safety, not aesthetic measures. Similar from state-to-state, these laws define who violators are, the type or "function" of the person committing the action, and what items must be littered or dumped to constitute an illegal act. Municipal ordinances and state statutes require a "human action" in committing illegal littering or dumping, for one to be "held in violation." Most states require law enforcement officers or designated, authorized individuals, to "...witness the illegal act to write a citation." Together, prosecutions and punitive fines are important in fighting illegal littering and dumping.
Let's do it 2008 was a large campaign on 3 May 2008, to activate civic society in Estonia in an effort to cleanup the country from litter. It was organized by Let's Do It! World.
Green Up Day, observed annually on the first Saturday of May, is a statewide effort in the US state of Vermont to clean up roadside trash.
Let's Do It World is a global civic organization that started from Estonia, mobilizing people worldwide in joining local, national and regional clean-up events. Among other projects, it is the founder of World Cleanup Day, on which a network of 180 countries, with over 21.2 million participants took place in 2019.
Boyan Slat is a Dutch inventor and entrepreneur. A former aerospace engineering student, he is the CEO of The Ocean Cleanup.
The Ocean Cleanup is a nonprofit environmental engineering organization based in the Netherlands that develops technology to extract plastic pollution from the oceans and to capture it in rivers before it can reach the ocean. Their initial focus was on the Pacific Ocean and its garbage patch, and extended to rivers in countries including Indonesia, Guatemala, and the United States.
World Cleanup Day is an annual global social action program aimed at combating the global solid waste problem, including the problem of marine debris. It is coordinated by the global organization Let's Do It! World, the headquarters is located in Tallinn, Estonia. The next World Cleanup Day is 16 September 2023.
Plogging is a combination of jogging with picking up litter, merging the Swedish verbs plocka upp and jogga (jog) gives the new Swedish verb plogga, from which the word plogging derives. It started as an organized activity in Sweden around 2016 and spread to other countries in 2018, following increased concern about plastic pollution. As a workout, it provides variation in body movements by adding bending, squatting and stretching to the main action of running, hiking, or walking. An estimated 2,000,000 people plog daily in 100 countries and some plogging events have attracted over 3,000,000 participants.
4Ocean is a for-profit company founded in Boca Raton, Florida, in 2017. 4Ocean retails bracelets made from recycled materials, as well as apparel and other merchandise for which the materials are environmentally- and socially responsibly sourced.
Big Blue Ocean Cleanup is an international nonprofit environmental organization with offices in York (UK), Vancouver (Canada), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), and Sydney (Australia). It is focused on cleaning beaches and the oceans, protecting wildlife, ocean research and innovative technologies development.
We Heart Seattle (WHS), formerly We Heart Downtown Seattle and incorporated as I Heart Downtown Seattle, is a volunteer organization responding to trash and homelessness in Seattle. The group organizes volunteer trash cleanups in public parks in which homeless people have established camps, primarily through a public Facebook group and Facebook events. Their affiliate We Heart Portland started performing similar cleanups in Portland, Oregon in May 2022.
A cleanup or clean-up is a form of environmental volunteering where a group of people get together to pick-up and dispose of litter in a designated location. Cleanups can take place on a street, in a neighborhood, at a park, on a water stream, or other public spaces. Cleanup events are often volunteer run. The cleanup volunteers make sure the waste picked-up is disposed of in its appropriate place. Cleanup events are often community-centered and led.
Team Seas is an international collaborative fundraiser that was started by YouTubers MrBeast and Mark Rober as a follow-up to Team Trees. The fundraiser succeeded in raising over 33 million U.S. dollars. All of the donations from the fundraiser go to the Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup, with the organisations splitting the donations. The fundraiser pledges to remove 30,000,000 pounds (14,000,000 kg) of marine debris from the ocean by removing 1 pound (0.45 kg) of marine debris from the ocean for every 1 dollar donated. As of 4 August 2023, $33,446,170 has been raised.
Let's Do It! India (LDII) is an International Environmental Organization founded by Pankaj Choudhary in 2016. It has more than 2.2 Million active volunteers all across the country. Let's Do It! India encourages people all across the world to participate in local, governmental, and international cleanup efforts. The foundation is the Indian chapter of Let's Do It! World. It is a section 8 non profit company registered under India's company's act with required 12A and 80G section.
