Clean locally, celebrate globally: the River Cleanup case

Did you know that 80% of all ocean waste comes from rivers? As the name suggests, River Cleanup aims to tackle pollution by starting at the rivers.

Following the success of the RhineCleanUp in 2018, the project extended to other major rivers throughout Europe. Together with local partners, River Cleanup is organising actions along 10 significant rivers, involving more than 20,000 people in 200 cities and 15 countries.

In Belgium, River Cleanup is tackling the Scheldt and Meuse and its tributaries this year. The national campaign started in June 2019, calling on all inhabitants to clean up their neighbourhoods along canals, streams, and rivers on September 21th. This cool initiative is only possible because of its volunteers joining forces. To create equally inspirational branding, Duval Branding teamed up with MMBSY and Sevendays.

MMBSY created awareness and relevance by organising press conferences and working together with influencers, reaching 9,271,972 citizens via print, online press, and TV.

Groups, schools, associations and even companies could register their cleanup through the River Cleanup website. It was built on Drupal, which lends itself very well to a community platform. It involves 20,000 people in 15 countries, which makes multilingualism very important. Anyone can use the website to create a cleanup campaign or register to help with an existing one. Drupal has an extensive user management and access rights system, so participants can easily manage their registrations.