A Cleaner City: The HQ Team Collects Rubbish

International Earth Day is on 22 April 2022! Knowing this, we took this opportunity to do something good for environmental protection as a company. Based in beautiful Hamburg, we wanted to enforce an environmental measure that benefits the city above all. The idea: collecting rubbish! Large cities in particular are prone to major pollution. Almost every city in Germany is struggling with the littering of public areas. Especially in spring, when the weather gets warmer, people increasingly spend their time outside and carelessly throw rubbish around the city, not in waste bins, the city cleaners understandably quickly reach their limits.

Allbranded Hamburg team cleans up

For more than 20 years, Stadtreinigung Hamburg has been organizing a large clean-up campaign. Each year, cleaning teams come together for a designated period of time to collect rubbish together in the Hanseatic city. The groups are mostly made up of friends, students, families, neighbours, club members or even work colleagues. Trash is searched for in various city districts and collected by the teams in large rubbish bags. Clean-ups are usually carried out in parks, on roads or even on water bodies around the area. The required materials are graciously provided by Stadtreinigung Hamburg (The Cleaning Association). After the collection, the trash is picked up at previously agreed locations, so that it can be disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner. In 2021 alone, around 47,000 people, distributed in about 900 groups, took part and collected a total of 90 tons of rubbish!

For our allbranded clean-up team, the clean-up took place on March 30, 2022. After work, they began their garbage search together in the districts of Altona and Sternschanze. The team mostly distributed themselves on main roads and quickly realized that finding rubbish became the smallest challenge. The team collected paper cups, old handkerchiefs, food packaging, cigarette butts and used disposable masks - the rubbish on the streets did not end! They collected all the waste that got in our way in their waste bags. In the Schanzenviertel alone, 12 clean-up teams were deployed during the clean-up period. Sometimes it would happen that they ran into other teams. But passers-by also quickly became aware of the action and were extremely interested! In total, our cleaning team was able to fill six, 60 litre trash bags, and make the streets at least somewhat cleaner.

Littering Is Still a Problem

Even though the city is freed from the rubbish problem for short notice thanks to the "Hamburg cleans up" campaign, our team was shocked to see how much rubbish is on the streets. For pedestrians such as motorists or cyclists, the viewing angle is quite different. It was only when collecting that we realized that urban pollution is a more serious problem than perceived. They found rubbish that was hidden in bushes, which continues to endanger the habitat of the numerous animals that live there. At the same time, they discovered garbage that was already so old that they had to partially dig it up! It is frightening how much waste ends up on the streets, although the nearest rubbish bin is not even that far away. Even if there is no waste bin in sight, this should of course not be a reason to throw the rubbish indiscriminately on the street! The City of Hamburg's clean-up campaign has provided a solution for littering, at least in the short term. Nevertheless, first, an appeal should be made to those people who carelessly throw waste into nature and undesignated waste areas. It is sad to see how plastic or other harmful objects destroy the habitat for many animals. Whether in cities, parks, rivers or in seas - littering is a worldwide problem!

How We Can Continue Helping

The rubbish collection campaign showed us how much rubbish can be found on the streets. Our intention is to draw the attention of other people and organizations to the rubbish problem all around the world. We now want to collect rubbish together at regular intervals. For the allbranded team, this was a learning experience, which at the same time was also associated with a lot of fun. It has strengthened the team bond and our awareness of the rubbish problem in big cities. We are certain that there will be many more sustainable team events that will take place for each allbranded location around the world!