Increase the number of people who fight against garbage (garbage in nature) and socially recognize the work of the members of this network of liberators. These are two of the main objectives of the new awareness campaign of the Libera Project, which has among its elements the Liberators’ Manifesto’ and the slogan “Liberate your world of garbage”‘, which will be the umbrella concept of the campaign.
The Libera Project, by SEO/BirdLife in alliance with Ecoembes, was born in 2017 with the aim of raising awareness among citizens to keep natural spaces free of waste. Now, six years after its launch, the Libera Project reinforces its activities with this new campaign that aims to mobilize all audiences to join this great network of liberators and be an active part of the fight against garbage.
“Los Liberadores is the movement of those who fight against garbage and is made up of people, associations, institutions, entities or towns. If something characterizes them, it is that they are optimists, solvers, daily activists and committed. They prevent, collect, teach and report to fight against rubbish”, highlights the Libera Project.
The objective of this manifesto is to give visibility to the people who daily become Liberators. People who, acting closely, help to keep their environment free and, therefore, that of those around them. People who with day-to-day actions such as reducing consumption, reusing objects that can have a second life, buying responsibly and with self-control, recycling, using sustainable transport as much as possible or not throwing waste on the ground, free our garbage world.
“The Libera Project was born with a clear vocation to generate a network. Six years later, we can be proud of the more than 2,000 entities and tens of thousands of volunteers who confirm this movement. The Liberators and Liberators have understood that, although it is not ‘their’ rubbish, it is their problem. We hope that this campaign will serve to give voice and make this movement grow”, says Miguel Muñoz, coordinator of the Libera Project at SEO/BirdLife.
“We believe that the population is not aware of everything they can do in their day to day in favor of nature. In this sense, that liberating culture is missing. For this reason, now, we go one step further and present the ‘Liberators’ manifesto to value and give visibility to the work of all those people who become Liberators with actions in their day-to-day life and thus help to free the spaces natural garbage”, says Sara Güemes, coordinator of the Libera Project at Ecoembes.
In 2022, more than 30,000 people mobilized in Spain against garbage. This was the highest figure recorded since this project was launched in 2017. Since then, Libera has not stopped growing. As of today, it has managed to consolidate a network that already consists of 2,200 entities (274 more than in 2021) including organizations, companies, public administrations, scientific entities or local groups, which have been joining this movement to fight against garbage. and, together, work on solutions to this environmental problem.
One of Libera’s milestones is having woven a network of collaborating entities, where one of the fundamental pillars is public administrations. In 2022, 81 new municipalities from all over the country joined the program
In addition, Libera has a network of research, educational, social or sports entities, the Libera Alliances, which channel their work through different joint projects such as the fight against abandonment and removal of 40 m3 of ghost nets (‘ghost fads’ ) of Alnitak in collaboration with the Fundación Reina Sofía, the network of marine vigilantes of the Oceánidas organization, whose divers removed 17 tons of garbage from the Spanish coast, the sampling and analysis of microplastics in 30 rivers thanks to the work of scientists from the entity Man and Territory or the removal of 4.6 tons of large waste from the Posidonia meadows of the Mediterranean through the alliance with SUBMON.
The prevention of the abandonment of waste in nature through environmental education is also key and the Libera network reaches the educational community through the Aulas Libera program, which aims to promote the fight against garbage and create a commitment to natural environments among students. During the 2021/2022 academic year alone, more than 600 new classrooms from all over Spain have signed up for the initiative, thus allowing more than 8,000 new students to learn about the problem of abandoned waste that surrounds them and seek solutions through gamification and actions. didactics on the nearest natural terrain. Among the components of this great network, the 129 private companies that have participated in the movement promoted by Libera in 2022 also stand out. In total, some 250 since its inception.
Thanks to the commitment and work of all those who are part of the Libera network, in 2022 it was possible to collect and classify nearly 120 tons of garbage in more than 1,700 natural points throughout Spain, and it was possible to characterize more than 211,000 abandoned waste in nature.
