Latvia hosts global World Cleanup broadcast from Riga Town Hall

About 200 countries are taking part in the World Cleanup campaign, with Latvia hosting the event’s global live broadcast from Riga Town Hall, LSM reported.

Latvia was chosen as the broadcast centre in recognition of its long-standing efforts to improve the environment and its role in starting the Great Cleanup tradition.

The broadcast from Riga is being hosted by Colm Flynn, an Irish journalist working in the United States who is also an activist in the World Cleanup movement. The first World Cleanup took place in 2018, inspired by the examples of Estonia and Latvia, which had launched large-scale cleanup events a decade earlier.

The movement now takes place in around 200 countries. The Riga broadcast connected with participants in several of them and included recorded segments and interviews with experts on various environmental issues.

Vita Jaunzeme, the movement’s lead organiser, said the international broadcast would help showcase Latvia’s efforts to care for its land and raise the country’s profile in the area of environmental responsibility.

Activities in Riga’s Town Square were also closely linked to the World Cleanup campaign. Organisations hosted information tents, including the Nature Conservation Agency, which presented information about invasive species and the effects of human activity on nature.

Agnese Balandiņa, the agency’s senior nature education specialist, said the global event highlighted issues that were important and relevant around the world. She said human activity had created a need to help nature and remedy the consequences of people’s actions.