Innovation: Let’s Do It!
Estonia and international
AAI Domains:
Capacity and enabling environment (use of ICT)
Independent, healthy and secure living (physical activity)
Participation in society (voluntary activities)
The world faces multiple challenges ranging from ageing to environmental degradation that social innovations can play a part in addressing by mobilising people of all ages to be active citizens in their locality right around the world. A major challenge is the problem of illegal dumping of waste that blights the natural environment in countries right around the world that would cost a huge amount to remove if it was the responsibility of public authorities.
In Estonia in 2007 a small group of activists met to develop a solution to the problem of their fellow Estonians illegally dumping rubbish in the forests across the small Baltic state. The Let’s Do It founders started a campaign to raise awareness of the issue and began to work with municipalities, voluntary organisations and the general public to organise a truly mass participation clean up event across the country.
On 3 May 2008 they managed to mobilise approximately 50,000 people, which represents 4% of the entire population of Estonia, for a five-hour clean up that cleared more than 10,000 tons of garbage and cost less than €500,000 compared to an estimated cost of €22.5 million. The idea rapidly spread to the neighbouring states of Latvia where 40,000 volunteers participated and Lithuania where 150,000 people were mobilised to take part in 2009.
The concept continued to spread with an estimated 250,000 people, approximately 12% of the population, took part in Slovenia. Annual events have continued to mobilise large numbers across Estonia and in 2012 the originators established Let’s Do It World to spread the idea right around the globe. The basic principles of cooperation, a positive approach to addressing serious problems and ambitious aims for a better and cleaner world inform the work that has now spread to 112 countries from Afghanistan through Belarus and Chile to the USA and Vietnam with an estimated 14 million volunteers mobilised.
Each partner country has a voluntary coordinator and the global aim is to expand the number of volunteers to 380 million people by 2018 as a fully committed partner of the United Nation Environment Programme. An innovative feature of Let’s Do It is the use of a smart phone app to map garbage hotspots in advance of the mass clean up day and this has also developed into an education programme that can be delivered in schools to change behaviour so that rubbish is not illegally dumped in the future.
Let’s Do It work in partnership with local municipalities who provide considerable ancillary support to enable the productive and safe use of large numbers of volunteers. The organisation receives funding from the general public and the private sector as part of their corporate social responsibilities.
In relation to active ageing indicators, Let’s Do It is based on the mass mobilisation of voluntary activity right across the life course so that achieving an environmentally and socially desirable goal is a fun activity. The use of ICT to map the location of waste is an innovative feature of the project and the actual collection of waste provides a moderate level of physical activity for participants. The rapid growth from a single event in Estonia to a global movement with millions of participants marks out Let’s Do It as a highly promising social innovation that has direct relevance to environmental sustainability and also to active ageing over the life course.