Analytics, Estonia, Innovations, Markets and Companies

Rainer Nolvak.

About 10,000 tons of illegal waste was lying around all over Estonia, but Nolvak and Co. had this outrageous plan to clean it all up on one day! So on the 3rd of May this year more than 50,000 volunteers – about 3% of the Estonian population – ventured out to clean forests, roadsides and other public areas from waste.

More than 40 waste management companies supported the initiative with necessary containers and garbage transportation vehicles. The initiative aimed to recycle up to 80% of the collected waste, making it the first massive recycling project in Estonia. The usual amount of garbage recycled in Estonia is 10%, so this is eight times more than the average.

But there was also a technological angle. "Let’s Do It! 2008" was backed by one of the founders of Skype, Ahti Heinla. He helped taking care of digital geo-mapping of the waste.

Before the actual cleanup work started, the campaigners used special software based on GoogleEarth, positioning software for mobile phones and mobile phones with GPS to map and photograph 11,000 illegal garbage dumps across all 45,227 square kilometers of Estonia. The soft can be used in much larger and less cleanly countries, such as India.