Hoping for our biggest ever turnout for our 3rd clean-up of 2022!
At 16:00 on Saturday 17th September, volunteers from some of Malta’s leading iGaming companies, the KFS coalition (Koalizzjoni għal Futur Sostenibbli), the private sector and the Emergency Services will carry out a mammoth clean-up of the locality around Ghajn Tuffieha for World Cleanup Day 2022.
As official participants of World Cleanup Day 2022 – which has mobilised 60 million participants from 191 countries worldwide – and with the support of Clean Malta, Mgarr Council and Mosta Police, our ambition is to clear the roadsides, verges and vegetation of the three main routes leading to Ghajn Tuffieha, as well as Riviera beach, from plastic and other waste in a major action designed to show our firm support for a cleaner environment.
This will be the third major clean-up organised by iGEN this year, and the second in collaboration with KFS. Previous clean-ups at Golden Bay and Bahar ic Caghaq succeeded in attracting large numbers of volunteers, who willingly gave their free time to remove plastic bottles, cans, cigarette packets, PPC items, car tyres, car batteries, glass, furniture and just about anything else you can imagine, which had been dumped in the countryside and the along the coast.
This time we are hoping for an even bigger turnout, and our ambition is to clear up to 10 km of approach roads leading from Mellieha, Xemxija and Mgarr towards Ghajn Tuffieha, as well as the headland and roads leading to Golden Bay. The EFRU will have a fire engine and an ambulance on hand at Riviera car park, which is especially fun for any children joining the event, and they will also take on the task of cleaning the huge amounts of rubbish dumped over the boundary wall to the north of the car park.
‘We will tailor our event to how many people we have on the day. The more volunteers, the more areas we can clear.’ says Glen Smith, iGEN CSR co-ordinator as well as founder of KFS-member Bahar ic Caghaq Cleanup. ‘We are doing this partly to illustrate the sorry state of the Maltese countryside, highlight the inadequate investment in infrastructure and services for keeping the island clean plus the lack of education and enforcement around environmental laws, and partly as a way of building a grass-roots movement of people who are willing to take personal responsibility and roll up their sleeves for a good cause. And it is also immensely satisfying.’
These clean-up actions are designed to highlight the scale of the problem. The KFS was formed partly as a network for collecting data around the amounts of waste being collected, because with real data from multiple sources it is difficult for those responsible to ignore the problem. And iGEN, representing one of the country’s biggest industries, which directly employs over 10,000 people, can use its influence to drive a dialogue with the government.
