Beach clean-up campaign held in Azerbaijan

Baku. 11 June. REPORT.AZ/ Some 300 youth activists, representatives of UN agencies in Azerbaijan, civil society and private sector collected about five tons of plastic and other types of waste during the beach clean-up campaign conducted on the shores of the Buzovna beach in capital Baku, Report informs citing the UN office in Baku. 

The event was part of the UN-supported Environmental Week in Azerbaijan and organised by the United Nations Office in Baku in collaboration with the IDEA Public Union, Clean City state agency and Azerbaijani Youth Foundation.

“Seeing hundreds of mostly young people supporting today’s initiative was truly an inspiration in action, which demonstrated their care for protection of the environment,” said Ghulam Isaczai, UN Resident Coordinator in Azerbaijan, who also joined the cleanup initiative along with other 35 staff members of UN agencies operating in the country.

“More such actions are needed to raise awareness and mobilise citizens of the country towards a drastic reduction of single-use plastic,” he added.

The participants collected plastics, such as bottles, straws and cutlery, as well as cans, cigarette butts and other types of waste and submitted them to the Clean City state agency for recycling.

The beach clean-up aimed to support the theme of the World Environmental Day for 2018 - “Beat Plastic Pollution”. The theme invites to consider how we can make changes in our everyday lives to reduce the heavy burden of plastic pollution on our natural places, our wildlife and our own health.