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Expat-led environmental group holds cleanups in Turkey
| Published: | 17 Aug at 6 PM |
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Tidy Turkey is yet another of the world-wide initiatives to clean up beauty spots and beaches covered in human-deposited trash.
Environmentally-friendly and like-minded expats and citizens come together for a full day of cleaning up selected areas, having fun and meeting new people at the same time. Lucy Tooze, a well-travelled Australian expat now living in Turkey, is the founder of the group which held its inaugural event on last year’s World Cleanup Day. Since then, a further seven events have been organised. Lucy told local media she’d despaired at the rubbish and litter covering every place of natural beauty she’d visited, and decided to do something about it.
Her first step was to advertise on the Internations website for other concerned volunteers, with the first event, Cleanup Day 2017, held in Burgazada as a result of her appeal. Seven more events followed, and members of the group also created their own events such as the Crash the Trash meetup which took place along the Moda shoreline after two swimming club members created a video showing the rubbish-filled sea in which they were forced to train. Other events included a meetup at an Istanbul dog shelter and a gathering held at Prince’s Island Kunahada. All the cleanups are documented on Lucy’s wordpress blog, and her commentaries and reviews are as entertaining as they are educational. She says more Turks are now becoming involved, bringing the numbers attending to between 40 and 50 and enabling each event to clean up ever larger areas.
Sometimes, Tidy Turkey’s expat and local cleanup enthusiasts are joined by other volunteer groups such as Eco Istanbul, founded to create more awareness about environmental issues. Right now, Lucy’s concentrating on their next big event, to be held on this year’s September 15 World Cleanup Day. She’s planning a countrywide series of meetups involving as many sites and as many volunteers as possible, with each sub-group choosing its own location for the cleanup. Sites in and near Istanbul will include Burgazada, Buyukada, Belgrade Forest and the shore at Uskudar. She’s also hoping to have dive teams collect rubbish underwater around the islands, Fethiye and Sile.
Environmentally-friendly and like-minded expats and citizens come together for a full day of cleaning up selected areas, having fun and meeting new people at the same time. Lucy Tooze, a well-travelled Australian expat now living in Turkey, is the founder of the group which held its inaugural event on last year’s World Cleanup Day. Since then, a further seven events have been organised. Lucy told local media she’d despaired at the rubbish and litter covering every place of natural beauty she’d visited, and decided to do something about it.
Her first step was to advertise on the Internations website for other concerned volunteers, with the first event, Cleanup Day 2017, held in Burgazada as a result of her appeal. Seven more events followed, and members of the group also created their own events such as the Crash the Trash meetup which took place along the Moda shoreline after two swimming club members created a video showing the rubbish-filled sea in which they were forced to train. Other events included a meetup at an Istanbul dog shelter and a gathering held at Prince’s Island Kunahada. All the cleanups are documented on Lucy’s wordpress blog, and her commentaries and reviews are as entertaining as they are educational. She says more Turks are now becoming involved, bringing the numbers attending to between 40 and 50 and enabling each event to clean up ever larger areas.
Sometimes, Tidy Turkey’s expat and local cleanup enthusiasts are joined by other volunteer groups such as Eco Istanbul, founded to create more awareness about environmental issues. Right now, Lucy’s concentrating on their next big event, to be held on this year’s September 15 World Cleanup Day. She’s planning a countrywide series of meetups involving as many sites and as many volunteers as possible, with each sub-group choosing its own location for the cleanup. Sites in and near Istanbul will include Burgazada, Buyukada, Belgrade Forest and the shore at Uskudar. She’s also hoping to have dive teams collect rubbish underwater around the islands, Fethiye and Sile.
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