It was in one of such amazing instances that a South Korean mayor was left with no option but to deliberately dump a tonne of refuse at a beach within his city just so hundreds of volunteers could clean it up the next day, in celebration of the International Coastal Cleanup Day September 21.
A report by Odditycentral.com says volunteers across the globe from Thailand to Hawaii, gathered on their local beaches on the said date to clean up trash and make a powerful statement about the poor state of the environment.
However, having seen that there was no dirt at the pristine sand of southwest Jindo for the volunteers to clean on the day, Lee Dong-jin, mayor of Jindo county thought it convenient to purposefully dump some rubbish at the beach for the event.
In a statement, Lee Dong-jin said: “We brought in waste styrofoam and other coastal trash gathered from nearby areas so the 600 participants could carry out clean-up activities.”
The mayor added that the refuse was conveyed to the clean beach by a truck just to create something for the environmental activists to convey their message to the world.
He was however quick to add that 100 per cent of the refuse was cleaned up by the volunteers, assuring that none entered the ocean to cause any secondary pollution.
Well, although Lee Dong-jin thought he was doing a commendable job, he recently came under a severe backlash after his revelation. Some cleanliness bias people thought he got it completely wrong.
The criticisms were so overwhelming that his office had to later apologise to the people, saying the gesture was only meant to “raise awareness about the seriousness of coastal waste”.
Imagine a beach in Ghana being so clean that volunteers cannot find single trash to pick. How was the September 21 even marked in Ghana though?