A good clean up - Greenfinity Day in Skopje

Sometimes, the way we treat our environment leaves a lot to be desired.  There is a beautiful pathway along the Vardar river in Skopje, and it's a favourite for walkers, runners and bikers. Unfortunately, it's often the case that empty plastic bottles or cans are carelessly dumped there.  Or sometimes, even household rubbish. 
 
Carelessness has huge consequences
When it's not just one, but many people, doing this, the rubbish soon mounts up. As well as marring the beauty of the area, this is also a burden on the environment.  If the rubbish ends up in the river, the consequences are even worse.  As well as in the sea, huge quantities of empty plastic bottles have already been found dumped in rivers, such as the Danube.  This plastic rubbish eventually breaks down, leaving tiny particles of plastic, which then end up in our food chain through the fish that we eat. 


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A dedicated team cleans up
To ensure that it doesn't get that far, and to allow the Vardar riverbank to continue to showcase its beauty, Mia Neshovka, the Marketing Manager for Lyoness Macedonia, organised a Greenfinity Day to tackle the problem. 
 
Who would have thought that 70 volunteers would turn up to help at 9 o'clock on a Saturday morning? Together with 10 employees from the Macedonian Lyoness Regional Office, and armed with gloves, rubbish bags and a Greenfinity T-Shirt, the team got to work.  As there were so many volunteers, they were able to split up into 2 teams and work on both sides of the riverbank at the same time.
 
The volunteers' motivation was incredible.  Cleaning up other peoples' rubbish isn't the most pleasant of tasks; even less so when the weather is also oppressively hot. However, the volunteers ploughed on regardless for several hours, cleaning up plastic bottles, cans, dirty nappies, household rubbish and much more - and kept smiling throughout. 
 
Prevention rather than action after the fact
The goal isn't just to clean up what has already been dumped, but to stop it being dumped in the first place. The multitude of volunteers roused people's curiosity - as they hoped it would - because the most important thing is to raise people's awareness of environment protection. To ensure this happened, 2 of the Lyoness Macedonia Team set up an information stand to inform passers about the campaign and the reasons behind it.


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A big thank you for this huge commitment
The volunteers were real troopers - despite it being a long, hard day, when the clean up was finished, they even asked when the next one would take place so they could take part again.
 
The Greenfinity Foundation would like to say a huge thank you to the whole Team; the tireless volunteers, the Lyoness Macedonia Team and in particular to Mia Neshovka.
 
Together for our world. A future together.