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| Volunteers cleaning, Round-About, Badagry. |
Green Janitor has partnered with the Rotary Club of Ajara to commemorate World Cleanup Day, sensitise the people and clean public palaces in Badagry, Lagos State.
The cleanup, which was held earlier today, was supposed to have taken place the previous Saturday but was postponed due to the weather.
At the cleanup, Ashade Abdulsalam Abiodun, the executive director of Green Janitor's sustainable initiative, told our correspondent that in the past few years, Green Janitor has achieved a lot, including the level of awareness the people of Badagry now have about the importance of making their environment clean. This was the result of consistent sensitization and awareness programmes.
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| Green Janitor and Rotary Club Ajara |
He also pointed out that the day is set aside globally to commemorate World Cleanup Day, which was started in 2008 in Estonia by a global NGO called Let Do It. The idea is to get changemakers across the world to advocate for a sustainable environment.
"This is to send a message that will instill passion in the people to make sure their environment is clean. The idea is bring people together on a day like this to register their footprint on the environment. It's also to advocate for climate change and how to achieve a circular economy, and for young changemakers to make a change in their immediate community."
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| Volunteers cleaning public places in Badagry. |
World Cleanup Day was first commemorated in Badagry in the year 2019 under the umbrella of Green Janitors. It was started in one location; by 2020, it had increased to 5 locations; in 2021, it had increased to 10 locations; in 2022, it had been further increased to 20 locations; and by 2023, it had also been increased to 30 locations.
"You can see that we have more people trying to get involve, our volunteers in the last year were 3000, while this year, more than that, our impact on society is increasing every year. When you look at our volunteers, we have more passionate people who are ready to work.
"You can now see people who are not ready to throw used plastic bottles on the floor because they now know it's usefulness and that it can be recycled or could cause flooding if not properly disposed of. Their mindset has changed.
Ashade said, "The people have to take cognizance of their environment, protect it, make sure it's sustainable and healthy for people to live in, and beyond that, we should make sure our environment is safe in our own hands."
Adding that, the volunteers are the real global changemakers and have made his achievement possible, and that the world is proud of them.
Rotarian Nicholas Ifeanyi Nzeh, the president of Rotary Club Ajara, said, "Environmental sanitation is one of the Club's seven areas of focus, which is why the club joined Green Janitor to make sure that the Badagry environment is clean and sustainable for people to live in.
"People should try and make their environment clean, which is important to their health, and this could lead to flooding if not properly managed," he added.