This weekend, nearly 450 volunteers gathered in various natural areas across Ukraine for the Cleanup Day. Together, they removed 31 tons and 300 kilograms of trash from national parks and nature reserves.
In Kyiv, Odesa region, and Zaporizhzhia, the State Emergency Service joined the initiative. Their staff conducted mine safety briefings and cleaned up alongside the volunteers.
The largest group gathered on Khortytsia Island — 200 people came to clean the protected Dnipro island. Another 100 volunteers came to tidy up Holosiivskyi Park in Kyiv.
Khortytsia also set a record for the most waste collected: a staggering 15 tons. The second-largest haul came from the Podilski Tovtry reserve in Khmelnytskyi region, with 8 tons removed. In Holosiivskyi Park, 3.5 tons were collected, around 3 tons in Roztochchia (Lviv region), and about a ton each in the Lower Dniester Park (Odesa region) and the Tsuman Forest (Volyn region).
As cleanup efforts repeatedly show, some people have a puzzling tendency to dump old tires in forests and meadows. Tires were found in almost every location. Left in nature, they would take over a century to decompose.
Holosiivskyi stood out for its unusual finds: some Kyiv residents had abandoned sports equipment, handbags, and even underwear there. A bra left in the woods would take 30–40 years to decompose, while its metal parts could remain for hundreds of years.
The cleanup campaign was supported by the Angelina Usanova Foundation. Volunteers were provided with water by “Karpatska Dzherelna”.
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