Catalunya cleanup challenge’s efforts

CONTEXT

In September 2020, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) launched a campaign for its member companies. Of the 1000s of individuals participating in the campaign, Robert Garcia Pano is one such individual. He was inspired by the power of individual actions & data that he decided to launch his own Challenge in the app called the Catalunya CleanUp Challenge.

CHALLENGE
How can you create an ecosystem of organizations, individuals and institutions that come together to create data-driven solutions?

LITTERATI SOLUTION

On 25th September 2020, Robert launched the Catalunya CleanUp Challenge (CCC) on the Litterati platform that allowed him to invite schools & organizations to contribute to his initiative. In October 2020, CCC registered itself at European Week for Waste Reduction. The goal of the challenge was to collect 100,000 pieces for World Environment Day 2021.

A strong believer in the Butterfly Effect, Robert was able to bring together 40 organizations ranging from corporates, schools, public administrations and even the Catalan government to see the value in collecting 454,000+ pieces & mapping, cataloging them.

CONCLUSION

What started as mere inspiration from a WhatsApp message from a coworker picking up litter with her kids has encouraged him to do a 30 min litter pick-up every day before work. He was inspired to create a challenge for his community of friends and family but then decided to reach beyond his network and managed to easily mobilize over 240 individuals. 

It has led to meetings with schools, awareness programs with organizations and several agreements with city councils around Catalunya.

Here are some tips that Robert considers the stepping stones to this ripple effect:

• using a slogan, like, “It is not my garbage, but it IS my planet”

• often mentions the importance of the “butterfly effect” even for very small actions, and

• creating partnerships along the spectrum of impact.

His efforts and actions have been eye-opening and truly inspiring. We hope to support Robert and his ecosystem to do bigger things in order to achieve his goal: “Catalunya can be the first region to engage their whole community in litter data collection and application to government-level change.”