Keep it Clean
Support this projectBased in Estonia, a group of citizens has created an international community of change agents who aim to change behaviours and help create sustainable solutions in local communities !
While the waste problem is a global one, solutions to it are very much local. What’s more, the ‘Keep It Clean’ concept foresees a specific role for different stakeholders in each society. Their approach enables one to embrace the unique characteristics of any community while applying general principles of zero waste, circular economy and non-formal education techniques.
This training program concept has been developed for the following reason – to be used as an implementation tool for making a very own Keep It Clean Plan. Its main aims are:
– Give participants basic skills that will help them to start sustainable waste management initiatives within their communities (municipality or district level).
– Create zero waste leaders and ambassadors.
– Empower participants to be ambassadors in their own communities and inspire them to pass on the skills and knowledge acquired from the training they receive.
Initial Problem
Learning about what a ‘circular economy’ is, does not necessarily help to know HOW to apply its principles in action. While teaching the youth of today about sustainability, from an early age, is important, it is just as important to provide decision-makers and community leaders today the knowledge of how to support change for a sustainable future. Keep It clean recognizes the need for creating more formats for adult education in ESD.
The positive impacts that the project has made:
Keep It Clean allowed the creation of a strong international community of change-makers who exchange best practices and learnings from their initiatives.
They also created and improved new community campaigns to change behavior and help design sustainable solutions. Their community enhancement projects are using waste management as a means of achieving their goals, improving livelihoods and environmental conditions.
What’s more, the ‘Keep It Clean’ concept foresees a specific role for different stakeholders in the society. Their approach enables to embrace the unique characteristics of any community while applying general principles of zero waste, circular economy and non-formal education techniques.
The impacted areas and population:
Keep It Clean empowers and enables organizations and people so they can thrive. More specifically, local decision-makers such as mayors are the first beneficiaries of Keep It Clean’s projects.
The populations and areas of Greece and El Salvador have both been impacted by the Keep It Clean project and its training that provides a broad knowledge of sustainable development as well as waste and resource management.
After participating in Keep It Clean trainings, everyone can become an ambassador in their own local community; to share the knowledge they have gained and create their own initiatives.
The obstacles and challenges
Keep It Clean wanted to prove that resource efficiency and waste-free communities were possible, however, they first failed because the methods used and their goals were too ambitious relative to the situation on the ground and the existing mentalities within the countries they implemented the project.
It doesn’t mean that their end goal – waste-free communities that preserve and regenerate – is impossible to achieve, it just means that they can’t apply their concept of cleaning up communities where the people there already have a fixed mindset. They need more people, coming from different sectors and fields. Keep it Clean needs new skills, any skills that they can use to achieve the next milestone and turn it into a measurable win so that they recover the energy of their first successful event (a cleaning event – a milestone with measurable success of tons of waste cleaned up but it was not THE solution), provided by the collective gratification of the people in the areas they helped clean up.
Similar projects
Youth Association for the Protection of the Environment in the Commune of Kita-Ouest (AJPE)
In order to save biodiversity, Djibone Sissoko mobilises young people to stop bushfires from spreading in Mali and educates inhabitants from his commune Kita-Ouest about the dangers these fires pose for animals and for the environment. He acts to raise awareness among small farmers and their families about the harmful effects that bushfires can have if poorly managed, devastating fauna and flora in their path.
Coral Vita: Restoring Our World’s Dying Reefs
Friends Sam Teicher and Gator Halpern have co-founded Coral Vita, a high-tech coral farming solution to protect the dying reefs in The Bahamas and around the world. Through high-impact coral reefs restoration, Coral Vita helps preserve reefs for future generations while spurring the blue economy’s growth locally and globally.
Coral Vita’s land-based farms integrate breakthrough methods to accelerate coral growth up to 50x (micro fragmenting) while enhancing their resiliency to warming and acidifying oceans (assisted evolution). Coral Vita’s model scales: one land-based farm can potentially supply an entire nation’s reefs with sufficient capital investment.
Alongside this novel form of high-tech coral farming, Coral Vita is deploying an innovative for-profit model to sustain large-scale restoration. Given reefs’ tremendous value, they are working to transition restoration to a commercial industry. This unique model facilitates revenue generation and better scalability than any current restoration practitioners. Coral Vita sells reef restoration as a service to customers that depend on reefs’ benefits. As the farms grow diverse, resilient, and affordable coral for restoration projects, they also function as eco-tourism attractions and education centres. Guests pay to visit the farms, where they learn about the importance of protecting reefs, and how they can help, including by adopting coral or planting them with Coral Vita’s teams and local dive shops. Students, fishermen, and community members also visit the farm to build local capacity for future jobs in the blue economy, and Coral Vita emphasizes hiring locally as much as possible.
Water for Wildlife
Patrick Kilonzo Mwalua is acting to tackle a fundamental problem: water scarcity in wildlife zones!
The project is all about water for wildlife as one way of conservation and reducing human-wildlife conflict for competing for the same water resource. Indeed, as the number of conflicts between humans and wild animals started to rise due to water scarcity, Patrick decided to bring in an efficient solution through re-watering the dry wildlife zones. Moreover, Patrick is also looking for innovative methodologies to make sure that animals have plenty of water into the wildlife zones.
Support the project
Discover meaningful projects
Choose your preferred project to embark on
Contact the project owner
Discover inspiring initiatives around the world and find innovative solutions
Duplicate the proposed sustainable solutions
Establish new partnerships
Find inspiration and discover new ideas
Connect and share experiences with other innovators around the world
Contact us to propose your project
Discover the innovations carried out by citizens in your CSR fields of action and in the regions of your choice
Support through funding or by providing skills in your areas of expertise
Contact the project leaders
Find inspiring stories of engaged citizens to enrich your editorial work
Help local projects increase their impact and make them known to your audience
Contact the project managers
Discover citizen initiatives around the world
Invest in local projects aligned with your strategy for sustainable development
Contact the project managers