84 Students Prepared Campaigns to Promote World Cleanup Day

A group of 84 students from different countries embarked on a mission to raise awareness and mobilize people for World Cleanup Day. Students prepared campaigns for social marketing, advocacy and communication within the Environmental Communication Programme’s 24-hour hackathon.

World Cleanup Day aims to encourage individuals, producers, and governments to join the global movement and tackle undesirable environmental practices such as waste. One prominent participant in this ventur, that was client on the hackathon, is Ecologists Without Borders, a Slovenian non-governmental organization known for its exceptional participation in clean-up actions. In the past, they have motivated an impressive 14 percent of Slovenia’s population to join in and clean up litter for a day.

Despite the progress made over the past decade in reducing illegal dumping and raising awareness among people, there are still challenges to be addressed. The global production of cigarette butts is approximately 6 trillion per year, and due to the plastic filters they contain, becoming the planet’s most pervasive form of single-use plastic pollution.

Therefore, three key activities are being promoted during World Cleanup Day: picking up waste, conducting brand audits on the collected waste items, and cleanup cigarette butt littering.

The campaigns created by the students for Ecologist Without Borders aim to prevent undesirable environmental habits among citizens, to put pressure on polluting producers and to advocate for better regulations from governments. Campaigns envisage engaging people from at least two countries, using social marketing strategies, advocacy and effective communication.

Through their campaigns, students aspire to contribute to tackling the global waste problem and building a more sustainable future.

The hackathon was the final project of the six-month Online Programme on Environmental Communication, which was followed by around 150 students from Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Slovenia and other countries. The Programme was implemented by the Institute for Communication Studies and the universities of Zagreb, Novi Sad, Sarajevo and Tirana, with financial support from the ERASMUS+ Programme of the European Union.