Doing good can be contagious. Holger Holland is convinced of that. He’s not a blue-eyed optimist, he has the numbers on his side. While two years ago 80,000 people took part in World Cleanup Day in Germany, last year he was able to look forward to 200,000 people who actively helped in almost 800 cities and communities to make the world a little better – and especially cleaner. An idea grows.
On September 17th it’s that time again. Then, as the sun rises in New Zealand, the wave travels once around the world until darkness falls over Haiti. Around 14 million people in 191 countries took part in World Cleanup Day in 2021 and removed 53,000 tons of waste from nature – all together for a clean, healthy and plastic waste-free environment.
The lanky Holger Holland, who always seems to be bursting with energy, has made a decisive contribution to the fact that more and more people in Germany are taking action against environmental pollution and plastic waste as part of the globally successful citizens’ movement. The 45-year-old lecturer in project and process management Holland is the founder of the German association Let’s Do It e.V., which mobilizes for World Cleanup Day.
He is tirelessly on the move all over Germany, in constant contact with local initiatives as well as city administrations, local councils and companies that take the issue of sustainability and a healthy environment seriously. The boyish-looking Holland, who actually lives in the Nuremberg area, is more and more often in Berlin because of the proximity to the actors in federal politics.
As part of the Berlin Volunteer Days “Common Cause” from September 9th to 18th, together with the member organizations of the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband and the Tagesspiegel, he is calling for cleansing campaigns. You can register your cleanup on the website www.gemeinsamesache.berlin – and find even more fellow campaigners.
For a year now, Holger Holland has been looking beyond Germany as an EU climate pact ambassador. He is pleased that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has assumed patronage for this year’s day of action.
[If you want to have all the latest news live on your mobile phone, we recommend our app, which you can download here for Apple and Android devices.]
“We have to change the way we treat our planet, use its resources more carefully and protect its biological diversity,” says von der Leyen. The good news is: “We can become active, we can do something about it: Everyone in their place.” In Berlin, the “Common Cause” patron and Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey also supports World Cleanup Day.
How necessary it is to do something against the littering of the earth with plastic waste, Holger Holland can impressively explain in an interview. “The issue affects us all,” Holland is convinced. Microplastics are now found even at the bottom of the Pacific deep-sea trenches, the long-lived plastic kills millions of animals every year, and microplastic residues can even be found in the human body.
Holland, who has also been the director of the European Let’s Do It movement since this year, knows how to put pressure on. Holger Holland repeatedly emphasizes that the voluntary associations do not see themselves as organizations, but as stimulators for a freely organizing civil society movement.
The common goal of the global initiative is to “motivate at least five percent of people on World Cleanup Day to use their commitment to sensitize decision-makers, business and politics to the problem of plastic pollution on our planet”.
In order to reach the future generation, the association has produced a rubbish primer for schools. The success is visible. Compared to last year, the number of participating children has increased tenfold to 25,000. In view of global digitization, the idea of initiating a digital cleanup day is completely new. “Each dataset consumes CO2,” says Holger Holland. Collecting and shredding superfluous data saves energy that heats up the climate, he says.
[For everyone who makes Berlin more beautiful, there is the Tagesspiegel newsletter “Ehrensache”. It is always published on the second Wednesday of the month. Register here for free: ehrensache.tagesspiegel.de.]
Participate and help out on World Cleanup Day in the context of the “common cause”, that can be very simple. Because there is a lot to do in Berlin – unfortunately. Being a hero is very simple: just take heart, talk to friends and neighbors and tackle the next dirty green space or any dingy corner in the neighborhood.
