Cleaning the environment

AS part of an initiative of SEO/BirdLife and Ecoembes to celebrate World Environment Day, more than 17,000 volunteers from all over Spain participated in the ‘1m2 against garbage’ campaign.

As explained in a statement, this clean­up action is designed to bring the public’s attention to the abandonment of waste in natural spaces and raise awareness about this serious environmental problem. Such littering also creates a potential risk of fires, contaminates the soil and water sources, and endangers the conservation of natural spaces and their biodiversity.

This campaign was carried out in advance of World Environment Day, which was on Monday, June 5. For the seventh consecutive year, thousands of people attended one of the 970 designated collection points with the intention of helping to clean up the environ­ ment.

Organised by local entities, town halls and educational centres, the volunteers have removed rubbish from natural terrestrial, fluvial and marine environments throughout Spain.

Some of these places included locations of great ecological value such as the Sanabria Lake Natural Park and the Segundera and Porto mountains in Zamora, Alicante’s Sierra Helada and Faro, Lagunas de Ruidera in Albacete, Ciudad Real, and the Doñana Natural Area in Huelva, Sevilla and Cádiz.

Asunción Ruiz, the executive director of SEO/BirdLife, thanked the society for its commitment to the conservation of nature which, once again, collaborated actively in this action.

“It is a great social movement because we need to change the production and consumption model to reduce our impact from the source,” she explained.

Ruiz continued: “We need to count on nature to guarantee a healthy, safe and resilient planet, that allows us to face the ecological crisis we are experiencing.”