“A Million Bags of Litter” campaign

Kuopio participated Yle’s nationwide “A Million bags of Litter” campaign in 2023 and 2024. The goal of the campaign has been to inspire people to collect one million bags of litter from the environment and to reduce indifference towards littering the environment. Municipalities and cities as well as organizations and communities participating in the campaign encourage their residents or members to collect litter.

Everyone was allowed to participate in the campaign. The collected bags of litter were marked on Yle’s real-time updating counter with the location where the litter were collected. The size of the bag was not specified. The counter was open during the campaign on Yle’s website.

During the 2024 campaign, more than 107,000 bags of litter were collected throughout Finland. 209 municipalities and thousands of people participated in the campaign. During the 2023 and 2024 campaigns, more than 318,000 bags of litter in total were collected in Finland.

Read more about the campaign on Yle’s website.

Campaign in Kuopio

A total of 1,939 bags of litter were collected in Kuopio during the 2024 campaign. Kuopio came in shared second place in the big cities category of the competition. Inspired by the campaign, several events were organized: the city carried out a litter excursion on the shore of Kuopiolahti and the city’s residents’ committees organized numerous litter walks.

During the 2023 campaign, more than 4,200 bags of litter were collected in Kuopio. In 2023, Yle interviewed Kuopio’s summer intern Hanna Möykkynen about her observations regarding litter collection, you can read Yle’s news here (in Finnish).

After the campaign

The city of Kuopio supports litter collection even after the end of the “Million Bags of Litter” campaign.

An individual litter collector can still borrow litter pickers from the main library or nearby libraries, information about borrowing can be found below. Please familiarize yourself with the litter collection instructions (safety instructions – in Finnish, pdf) in advance.

Collected litter

If possible, please take the collected litter to your own or the housing company’s trash cans, as trash cans in parks or other public areas are quite small and fill up quickly.

For a litter collection campaign, it is recommended to contact the city’s maintenance department in advance to arrange the litter removal, see the instructions below.

Borrow litter pickers from the libraries

Individual litter pickers can be borrowed from the main library and all nearby libraries. The loan period for litter pickers is two weeks and they can be borrowed with a library card.

In addition, one litter picker set with about 10 litter pickers, attention vests and a few garbage bags can be borrowed from the main library. The set can also be borrowed with a library card, the loan period is two weeks.

You can check the borrowing status of the litter pickers on the library’s page.

The individual litter pickers and the set will remain available for borrowing in libraries even after the “A Million Bags of Litter” campaign.

Litter collecting events

For a litter collecting event, it is recommended to contact the city’s maintenance in advance, so you can agree where to collect the litter bags for removal.

Instructions:

• Send the information about the litter picking event as an e-mail to city’s maintenance kunnossapito(at)kuopio.fi before the event. Include information about the litter collection, i.e. from which area the collection takes place and when, as well as the contact person’s information. Agree with the maintenance where the litter bags can be piled up after collection.
• Garbage bags for your litter picking event can be picked up from the urban environment’s customer service (city council building, Suokatu 42). Check the opening hours here.
• After the trash collection, send an email to maintenance to inform them that the trash can be picked up.

You can also find the litter collecting event -instructions here (in Finnish, pdf).

Page updated April 15, 2024