The Prospect shopping center gathered the heroines of the Weekend materials to talk about how to change the world for the better in small steps and with your own example.
How Irina Proskurina brought plogging to Ukraine:
«While I was living at the apartment, I had no global awareness of environmental pollution. Then I got married and moved to live in a private house near Kyiv. I began to go out for a walk with the dog and ran into a real problem: the majority of the residents of our village for 90 houses do not take out the garbage, but simply dump it into the fire ditches that foresters create. We even have two separate landfills — for construction and domestic waste. The latter is already several kilometers long. Once I went for a walk with a dog and took a garbage bag with me. This package was filled in ten minutes, moving away from the gate of his house by 15–20 meters. Soon my husband and I went to exhibitions in Prague and Berlin. In Prague, I saw people running around the streets, who were not just running around, but with packages, in which they collect street garbage. “What are you doing?” — I asked. — “This is plogging,” — the runners answered me. — “We have a group on Facebook, read it. We are texting, getting together. There are those who run with dogs, there are mothers with prams.” I returned home and started a cheerful plogging: I took a 120-liter bag and went hunting for garbage. As a result, I had in my bag the door of the Donbas refrigerator and a half of the toilet. I took a photo and entered the necessary hashtags. Generally, man people saw the difference between Ukrainian and European plogging. The feedback was huge. One of my followers is a television journalist. She immediately offered to make a feature. Once I was told that it was I who brought the plogging to Ukraine.
Many people read about plogging on the Internet: that this is jogging, combined with a useful work. They watch a video in which a girl with a pram runs in Sweden, waving a small bag in which she collected cigarette butts. Just try to run, carrying heavy trash bags with you! And then all this still needs to be sorted and taken to Kyiv to the sorting station.
Sorting garbage, plogging — these, of course, are not a solution to the global problem. Serious fines and penalties are needed, as well as educational work, training centers and the introduction of the need to protect the planet in the mass consciousness.»
Read more stories about how to change the world on the Prospekt shopping mall website.
Source: https://www.weekend.today/