Youth Week 2021: EuroPeers Austria - Trash Collection Event

Everything started with our very first project meeting of the “Green Agenda” project group. Apart from the trash collection event we had a few (actually also pretty cool) ideas, like cooperating with Fridays for Future, painting the streets to raise awareness, or holding an educational workshop to improve peoples’ knowledge about sustainable products, greenwashing, and sustainable food seals. After discussing for a while, the main reason for deciding to realize this event was that we wanted to do something visible, physical and we wanted to have a “real-world impact”.

When we started the planning process, we quickly realized that things would not go as smoothly as we had all hoped (and actually expected) in the beginning. The first problem was that almost our entire group was based in Vienna, which made organizing an event in multiple cities and regions as we had intended complicated. Thus, we decided to focus on the three cities in which at least one EuroPeer was living – Vienna, Salzburg and Graz. The person from  Salzburg and me, who lives in Graz, automatically became the “project managers” for those cities. Plus, our plans strongly depended not only on the corona situation in Austria but also on the engagement of the people working in the municipal offices in those cities. 

When the day finally arrived, I was extremely surprised by how many people showed up to participate! Luckily, I had a little advantage in Graz as I am studying Environmental System Sciences and thus I had many motivated colleagues who participated. All over Austria, we were more than 50 people! I had already received gloves and trash bags beforehand and handed them out one after one as the people turned up. To ensure COVID-19 safety, I said people could turn up within a 45-minute time frame and I sent them out only in pairs.

We spread over the whole city and cleaned streets, paths, riversides and even the city mountain! Not even the rain could stop us! In the end, we had collected roughly 10 full trash bags and some people even waited with me until the trash was picked up by the garbage disposal. 

My personal highlight? Two women were standing at the entrance of their shop, asking us what we were doing and why we we doing this. After we had explained it to them, one of them went back into the shop and brought us a bottle of sparkling wine as a present!

I was truly happy with how this event turned out and thus, there will definitely be a trash collection event 2.0 by EuroPeers Austria!
 

Updated on It-Tnejn, 18/10/2021