Tudor Jitianu was born and raised in Bucharest, Romania, and obtained degreed in Computer Science and Economics in Bucharest in 1996. He then worked mostly in Romania and for two years in Switzerland. As an entrepreneur from 2001 to 2005, Jitianu founded a successful consulting company, but turned to a different line of work in 2008 by supporting a number of NGOs involved in heritage preservation, teaching or ecology. A strong advocate for healthy food and lifestyles, Jutianu is also especially interested in how people learn. Evren Toparlak and Asli Kurtulus from Green Horizon's Turkish partner publication, Yesil Ufuklar, spoke with Jitianu on June 15, 2010.
Text and photos by Evren Toparlak & Asli Kurtulus
Let's Do It, World! is a grassroots organisation that inspires and mobilises active citizens to map out and clean up illegal wastes littering their home country. Based on a 'one day, one country' strategy, Let's Do It, World! coordinates a national day of garbage collection involving vast numbers of people, NGOs, private enterprises, and government agencies. In its first project in Estonia, 50,000 people and hundreds of organisations came together to remove more than 10,000 tonnes of garbage from the countryside. Since then, the movement has spread to Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia, Portugal, India, and Ukraine. In Latvia, Lithuania and Portugal, Let's Do It, World! events have brought together more than 100,000 clean-up volunteers. In Latvia the number of volunteers accounted for roughly 5 percent of the Latvian population, while efforts in Slovenia attracted an incredible 13 percent of the population.
Yesil Ufuklar: Tell us something about Let's Do It, World!
Tudor Jitianu: Let's Do It, World! is like a big corporation. There are a lot of people involved. In Estonia there were about 600 volunteers. So, like a company, the core business is cleaning and logistics, and logistics sometimes includes mapping - as is the case with all organisations. One important aspect is how to do things on a larger scale. Estonia has a population of 1.3 million, only about 10 percent of Istanbul, so organising 1.5 or so million versus 22 million, like in Romania, are quite different stories.
YU: When you start a project in a given country? With mapping, or first finding volunteers?
TJ: First finding organisers, volunteer organisers. And you have three types of volunteers: organizers, mappers and cleaners. The organisers are involved from beginning to end, and they devote 10, 20 or 30 percent of their time to the project over a period of months - say, six months, nine months or a year. You have to have devoted people, which is why you need at least a few to start with. In the case of Romania, we estimate that we have around 2,500. After you find the organisers, it's time to get volunteers. The second thing you have to recruit is mapping volunteers.
At the beginning, in Estonia ... Have you been to Estonia? It's like Switzerland or Finland, a very clean country, and when you get there you ask: Where is the garbage? So people in Estonia were saying "we don't have garbage." And one of the initiators of the project, using his car/GPS, mapped 800 points. And from that he made a map photo using GPS coordinates.
YU: So you make a map, you gather volunteers, and then afterwards you clean a region?
TJ: Yes, and you gather at an intermediate point, and are then transported to the final point. That's one part of the project. The other part of the project is to take care of the trash that hasn't been removed because maybe you don't have the resources to get to all of the trash points. And yet another part of the project is to involve as many schools as possible, because you have to teach children. That's one very important aspect. They might not contribute much toward cleaning efforts, but they have to see large amounts of trash in order for the magnitude of the problem to make an impression. And another point is to involve authorities. You need to ask why there are big piles of trash? Maybe there's no trash collection system, or the system in place is insufficient. If you have a trash map and have measured quantities you can then see why a relatively small population can produce so much trash at certain points. It means that somewhere there's a problem in the collection system, with a few complementary factors involved as well. So, it's not only about cleaning; it's also about educating people and influencing authorities. There are also three levels of effectiveness: Level 1 is good cleaning; Level 2 is improved collection and education; and Level 3 is to not produce so much trash in the first place.
YU: Do you have to educate your volunteers?
TJ: Yes, especially cleaners, because you might come across various types of ammunition. In Turkey maybe not, but in Romania, there are still bombs and bullets left over from World War II that can still explode.
YU: How are you able to attract people in such great numbers?
TJ: You might be referring to places like Slovenia, where we've attracted 13 percent of the population. With just 2 million people, Slovenia is something like Switzerland. It's not really an 'Eastern' country. It was the first country in the region to be admitted into the EU, and the population has a Western mentality. There's a good team of people working on the project, but this can be attributed, I think, to a particular work mentality and conditions of relative freedom. People in small countries are often more autonomous and independent, while people in bigger countries are waiting from the central authorities, 500 km away, to give them money, jobs, pensions.
YU: Do you work with municipalities and local authorities?
TJ: Yes, and county authorities. In Romania, they have an ecological inspectorate at the county level, and they can say "ah, this municipality is bad because..." Even outside the municipality it's someone's responsibility. There is some grey area in Romania, however. Anyway, the people who started in Romania were ecological activists. They know the legislation, and some of them have worked for recycling companies. And still these people can't tell you who's responsible for garbage outside of the municipality.
YU: Diud your project begin as a response to deficiencies in government policy?
TJ: Governments generally recognise the need to allocate resources, so that's okay. But sometimes the problem is a lack of transparency, so even friends like Lithuania and Slovenia can't get figures from the government. I ask several times: "Can you give us the figures?" And they say: "We don't have flag stations." Flag stations are intermediary trash collection points that are eventually moved by larger vehicles to a final destination.
Another thing done in Latvia was to organise a sort of flag station as an official national or municipal dumpsite. On a given day, everybody's allowed to take their trash there, and they bring a lot because in some countries you have to pay money to dispose of big items. People are, of course, reluctant to pay for this, so if they can do it for free one day per year they really take advantage of it. It's also raised awareness of the problem and now people are trying to do something about it.
YU: Do you have any problem with municipalities and local authorities?
TJ: We didn't have any during the first pilot project, but this is a really good county in Western Romania. The people really care a lot. As for the other two, I didn't hear anything problem-wise while I was there. In Slovenia, -- where 13 percent of the population was participating - there were two towns that originally didn't want to participate - said they wanted to do things their own way. But the day before they said they wanted to join. I think they felt big pressure to do so. The president was there, all of the cabinet ministers were there, the army was there, television....
YU: Why are so many people interested in volunteering for this project? How is it different from other NGO projects?
TJ: For one thing, the impact is immediate and visible. It clears the garbage and you don't depend so much on the government. That's the most important thing. You can see and measure the difference.
On the other hand, this project tackles a problem at the national level. If I pick up some plastic here and there, but no around me does, I have to have a very strong belief that I'm doing the right thing, even if it doesn't matter to the world around me. But people aren't like this. People want to see others doing the same thing. So this action shows how significant improvement can happen when lots of people get together and make a big effort.
YU: Do you have any concrete objectives for this project?
TJ: Quantitative objectives? Yes. We had said we wanted to bring out 100,000 in Romania, but maybe had a chance to get out 200,000. We wanted to achieve by September 25, 2010, cover all counties and work outside of municipalities. We don't have targets in terms of 'x' tonnes of waste. Rather, our target is the number of volunteers.
YU: Do you have any plans to try anything in Turkey?
TJ: I hope to do something in Turkey. I've said before that I'm willing to offer support in any country willing to try and start. By support, I mean IT support, a database infrastructure, et cetera.
