World Cleanup Day 2026

Finland is generally a pretty clean country but look a little closer and you start to lose some of that “trash blindness.” - Bradlie Martz-Sigala, Vice Chairperson, SCF.

On the 20 September Sustainability Community Finland together with Luckan Integration, Zero Waste Finland and Helsinki Climate Hub got together for the World Cleanup Day. Nearly 40 people showed up for an afternoon of community action! We started with coffee and a short warm-up before heading off in different directions to search for litter. What first looked like a completely clean area turned into several bags of garbage.

A volunteer's experience:

"At my first volunteer meetup event since I started with the Sustainability Community Finland I joined 40 others in creating a small moment of change.

When I first got there, on the surface I noticed how clean the beach looked. I thought how are we ever going to find any trash to pick up (in my eyes obviously this is positive) but...

One hour and a half later in-between the trees, shrubs and areas where it wouldn't be noticed, personally I found a small area of construction roofing tar sheets, buried in the soil, broken glass, broken porcelain, corroded metal, old plastic bottles and pipes and the worst was the pieces of broken Styrofoam (all in this 4 X 4 meter area) under the trees. Other volunteers found more trash in other areas.

World Clean Up Day is important because it creates an area of impact, small but still powerful. It's up to city councils to better comb these areas for hidden trash.

A small change but a group effort so that one less bird may swallow Styrofoam today or a single tree might be able to breathe better and grow plants around it." - Michael Suhonen, event host at SCF.

Thanks to everyone who joined us in Matinkylä to clean up our community! Every small action becomes more powerful when we do it together. 💚