Clean Games are team competitions in cleaning up local territories. The participants compete in waste collection and sorting, and winners are awarded. The players use the mobile app - it is like Pokemon Go but with garbage.
An event gathers from 30 to 1500 people. They collect from 0.5 to 20 tons of waste per hour. In general, Clean Games participants can collect 5-10 times more waste than during a traditional clean-up. Games are held as city festivals with a host, music and a picnic.
The project started in 2014 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Since then more than 1900 games have been held in 560 cities in Russian, USA, China, Japan and 24 more countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The games have united more than 125 000 players, who have collected more than 3400 tons of waste.
The impact is not only cleaning green and coastal areas, but also engaging locals into volunteering, raising their environmental awareness and territory development. These results relate to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Clean Games was awarded as the national winner from Russia in the Energy Globe Award in 2021, and became the international finalist in the category Youth. The awards were held within the COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference.
St. Petersburg
