While some people on social media love to brag about their conspicuous consumption, others are using the platform to save the environment.
The “Trashtag Challenge” hashtag is exactly what it sounds like. People who participate take pictures of garbage-ridden areas and then an after photo of them after they’ve been cleaned up.
The trend initially started in 2015 by lighting company UCO, Buzzfeed reports, as a way to encourage young people to be eco-friendly. But in the past week the hashtag has swept social media across the world, and currently has more than 25 thousand posts.
Volunteers have cleaned up parks, highways and beaches. One group in Novosibirsk, Russia, claimed they had taken 223 bags of litter, 75% of which would be recycled, reports BBC.
And it’s even turned into a social activity for Gen Zers. Henning Lubbe, a 21-year-old from Rustenburg, South Africa, discovered the challenge on Facebook and now organizes cleanup groups with his friends.
“On my way to work every morning I pass this dumpsite. I thought, Why don’t I clean it as part of the challenge?” Lubbe told The Guardian. “I think this challenge can make a huge impact, especially in places like my town, where we have problems with waste management.”
“Getting plastic out of the environment is important,” Mark Butler, policy director of the Ecology Action Center told The Star Halifax.
And he hopes that the hashtag won’t just be a brief trend, but a way for people to start talking about how they can save the environment.
“We need to do more than go behind the people that are littering and clean it up,” Butler said. “We need to turn off the plastic tap. There’s the waste hierarchy, which is to refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle. If we don’t do that stuff, then all we’ll be doing is cleaning up the litter with no end in sight.”
