Protect the Environment – Oplaneti se

Elementary school students – the “pioneers” of Tito’s Yugoslavia – used to collect scrap paper on a regular basis. Schools would sell the scrap paper and many bought the first school computers with that money.  Nowadays, scrap computers are sold off to recycling centers, ecology is taught in schools and pioneer organizations exist no more. Young ecologists, boy and girl scouts, NGO activists and volunteers of all walks of life collected around 400 cubic meters of garbage deposited in illegal dumps at 15 towns in Central and South Serbia from April 4 until end June. Rallied in the coalition Green List of Serbia, they dubbed their campaign Oplaneti se! (Planetize Yourself). Their efforts are immeasurable, their anthems intoned by local rockers and the EXIT music festival.

Oplaneti se! is not just a campaign. It is an appeal to all of us to think about the fact that we live surrounded by 5000 illegal dumps of household appliances, plastic, car tires, dead animals, diapers, glass and plastic bottles, barrels, car  batteries…. No-one’s and everyone’s dumps are not located in remote crags - young volunteers removed the garbage from city parks, popular picnic areas, city squares, the river banks. Oplaneti se! is a campaign carried out by 12 environmental organizations. They remove ‘no-one’s and everyone’s garbage’ because it pollutes the water, land, air, underground waters. Windborne, it pollutes the whole land.

Army of Serbia and Rambo Chip In

Cleaning up ‘no-one’s and everyone’s garbage’ would always kick off with a ceremony in the town center. The rallied volunteers would don their promotional T-shirts and pull on their rubber gloves, clang their spades and make a lot of noise. In Aleksinac, they were hosted by the Mayor. Like the gathered citizens, he was given the promotional material by which Oplaneti se! disseminates ecological ideas and then he and the Green List signed a Memorandum on the Preservation of the Environment. As the column of volunteers headed towards the dump, kindergarten and school children stepped in to perform sketches and exhibit their works inspired by environmental protection. How can any parent be indifferent to the fact that every citizen of Serbia leaves his or her offspring an average of 300 kg of trash as permanent inheritance?  

“Oh, children, it all begins with personal hygiene. This is the first time in 30 years I have seen someone removing the trash, not dumping it,” said an old grandpa, who brought his granddaughter to help the volunteers out in the Kruševac village of Vratare.

The whole town is involved in the campaign - the young people launch the clean-up activity, the municipal public utility companies help by providing their machinery, while schools stage environment quizzes. Much to the volunteers’ surprise, an Army of Serbia Lieutenant-Colonel brought in a group of soldiers to clean the seven city dumps and remove the garbage round the Army Hall during the clean-up at Raška. The army trucks drove the garbage away to the locations under the supervision of the public utility company. The following fact may help put things in perspective: in one out of three Serbian villages, the nearest garbage containers are between 5 and 10 km away from the homes.     

Politicians and stars, even foreigners, took part in the clean-up activities coordinated by the Balkan Local Initiative Fund and Young Researchers of Serbia. An MP joined in the campaign in Vučje. Two Greeks, who had been attending the municipal twinning ceremony in Aleksinac, gave the volunteers a hand. Well-known musician Rambo Amadeus collected garbage and cheered on the volunteers in Valjevo. Sporting a tan Safari hat on his head, he wondered: “Why don’t we explain to the people that we should paint the facades and roofs of the houses white like the Greeks, to stave off the Sun? We wouldn’t need as many air conditioners.” The volunteers collected around 20 cubic meters of garbage in Valjevo and Rambo happily posed before cameras with the activists on the dump. The photographs on environmental protection are taken during every clean-up activity and their authors enter the competition for the best photograph. The exhibition of the works stays on display in the local community. The Oplaneti se! campaign is funded by USAID via the Institute for Sustainable Communities. The Ministry of Environmental Protection and Spatial Planning also supported the project.

Shells in the River

The cleaned up illegal dumps no longer serve as homes to ‘no-one’s and everyone’s garbage’. They have been turned into grass turfs or the municipal authorities equipped them with containers, even those with compartments for classified waste materials. In several towns in which Oplaneti se! took place, the schools organized the exchange of plastic empties for school notebooks. An average citizen of Serbia uses 35 kg of paper and around 200,000 tons of waste paper are thrown away every year. Serbia, on the other hand, imports around 85,000 tons of waste paper a year to make (and export) cardboard, instead of collecting its own scrap paper (like Tito’s pioneers used to).

Seventeen trees need to be felled to produce one ton of paper. The scouts planted trees on the cleaned-up dumps of most towns included in the campaign and the green wave of future now spreads from the former waste sites. An eco bike-caravan has been spreading the green message from 23 June to 8 July. The “Bajk” association in Valjevo, Žagubica and participants from France are promoting environmental protection by touring the 15 municipalities. The caravan started its journey in Vranje and will end it in Novi Sad on July 8, just as the EXIT Festival opens.

Environmental protection and promotion is the main motto of the EXIT Music Festival this year. Part of EXIT’s campaign included concerts of local bands in all the municipalities. The evening concerts would begin by the humorous declaration of the most hard-working volunteers. Humor and youth are the logo of the clean-up activities. Just like in the joke told in Niš:

“Marko, where’s your brother?”
“Off to the Nišava River to collect shells.”
“But there are no shells in rivers.”

“Well, there are Yugo, Fiat, Audi car shells…”

Recycling is the next step – we need to understand that the garbage we produce is a raw material that can be processed and manufactured into something new. Recycling awareness campaigns have attracted a lot of interest in many towns but have not led to a sufficient number of concrete activities yet. The Oplaneti se! campaign has set the wheels in motion, taken the first steps down the path rarely trodden. It is time to continue. Let’s eliminate the dumps! Oplaneti se!