World Cleanup Day 2026: 300+ Volunteers, 5.3 Tonnes of Waste, and a Cleaner Lady’s Mile

At AdTech Holding, not every event is about technology. Sometimes, it’s about getting back to basics and taking care of the place we call home. And here in Cyprus, there’s plenty worth looking after.

This September, AdTech Holding marked World Cleanup Day as the main sponsor of the Limassol event, joining forces with City Friends Club – our partner in cleanups and tree plantings since 2023.

It was our 7th cleanup together, but the first one that was part of something much bigger. That same day, millions of volunteers in nearly 200 countries were doing exactly the same thing. World Cleanup Day travels around the planet with the time zones, and for a few hours Lady’s Mile was one of Cyprus’s three spots on that map, with AdTech Holding as the main sponsor of the Limassol event. 

Like the earlier ones, it was open to everyone, and this time it grew into a city-wide gathering, with families, friends, kids, and even dogs joining our colleagues on the beach.

More than 300 volunteers gave their early Saturday morning to Lady’s Mile, one of Limassol’s favorite beaches, and the dry edge of Akrotiri Salt Lake. Armed with gloves and bags, we got to work, and together collected a whopping 5.3 tonnes of waste. That’s 705 bags, to be precise.

Read on for a closer look at the day and our exclusive interview with Anna Gubareva, founder of City Friends Club.

The City Friends Club team, with founder Anna Gubareva in the center. Photo courtesy of City Friends Club.

A Global Movement, a Local Effort

World Cleanup Day began with a simple idea in Estonia in 2008 and grew into a coordinated global cleanup in 2018. 

Led by the Let’s Do It World movement, it has since brought together more than 139 million people across 212 countries, according to the organizers. In 2025 alone, 25 million people took part in 190 countries.

Today, World Cleanup Day is on the United Nations calendar of international observances, with each country finding its own way to get involved.

Here in Cyprus, City Friends Club organized 3 cleanups on the same morning: in Limassol, Larnaca, and Paphos. AdTech Holding sponsored the Limassol event, which drew the largest turnout of the three.

Why Lady’s Mile?

Lady’s Mile is one of the most popular beaches in Limassol – it’s a long, open beach where people come to enjoy the weekend, usually with a family. Just behind it lies Akrotiri Salt Lake, the island’s largest salt lake and a Ramsar wetland of international importance. Flamingos spend the winter here, while thousands of migratory birds stop over each spring and autumn.

But its beauty and wildlife are only part of the reason City Friends Club chose this spot for its main cleanup of the year. As founder Anna Gubareva explained:

“Lady’s Mile is a very special place because it is both beautiful and, unfortunately, an area where we regularly see a lot of litter. It is also located next to Akrotiri Salt Lake, an important habitat for migratory birds, including flamingos. At the moment, the lake is dry, which gives us a good opportunity to remove as much waste as possible before the water – and its seasonal residents – return.”

September offered such a window to act. With the lake bed still dry, volunteers could reach litter that would soon be underwater – in the same area where flamingos would return to feed.

There was a practical side to the choice, too: space, parking, and easy access. Less romantic, perhaps, but essential when hundreds of people turn up ready to help.

“For a cleanup of this scale, we need a large area with enough space for hundreds of volunteers to spread out and make a real impact, as well as sufficient parking and good access. So Lady’s Mile works particularly well for us: it is environmentally important, the problem is visible, and it can accommodate hundreds of volunteers.”

What 5.3 Tonnes Looks Like

We counted every bag before it left the site. After four hours of work, here’s what we collected in Limassol:

• 505 bags of general waste
• 200 bags of PMD (plastic packaging, metal, and drink cartons), set aside for recycling
• 2,880 kg of bulky waste – items too large to fit in a bag
• Around 5.3 tonnes of waste in total

Behind those numbers were more than 300 volunteers: AdTech Holding employees, their families, and people from across the city.

By the end of the day, 517 volunteers in Limassol, Larnaca, and Paphos had cleared roughly 7.1 tonnes of waste. About three-quarters of that came from Limassol alone.

From Our Cleanup to the World’s Day

AdTech Holding sponsored all six of our earlier cleanups with City Friends Club, but World Cleanup Day was the first time we became the main sponsor of an international event on this scale.  As before, we provided financial support and brought our team to the beach, while CFC took care of everything that made the day run: logistics, insurance, equipment, waste collection and removal, and photographers to capture it all.

Photo: City Friends Club

Maria Yashina, Brand Manager at AdTech Holding, who organizes the company’s community initiatives, comments:

“When we plan our community activities, I look for partners we can work with over time. We’ve been doing cleanups with City Friends Club since 2023, and this year we decided to become the main sponsor of World Cleanup Day in Limassol.

There’s something encouraging about knowing that people around the world are spending the same day cleaning up their own cities, beaches and parks. We wanted Limassol to be part of that and were ready to put more resources into it. That meant planning with CFC for a city-wide event, with our team taking part alongside other local volunteers. It’s the kind of initiative I’m happy for us to keep supporting.”

For Anna, that combination – funding an initiative and showing up for it – is what makes a corporate partnership valuable:

“For us, the most valuable partnerships are those where a company doesn’t simply provide financial support for an environmental initiative, but becomes an active part of it. City Friends Club brings the organization, expertise, and infrastructure, while the support of partners such as AdTech Holding allows us to significantly scale our projects, bringing together more volunteers, covering larger areas, and, ultimately, achieving a greater impact.

But there is another important aspect: the company brings not only financial support, but also its people. Employees take part in the cleanup alongside everyone else, and through the company’s communication channels, the initiative reaches an even wider audience.”

Planning the Cleanup

For volunteers, the morning started with picking up gloves, bags and ice creams. For the CFC team, it started weeks earlier. Anna explained what it takes to organize three cleanups on the same day:

“We need to select and assess the locations, coordinate with local authorities and partners, prepare equipment, arrange waste collection, organize volunteers and team leaders, and make sure everything runs smoothly and safely on the day. When several cities are involved simultaneously, logistics become even more important. It takes weeks of preparation and close coordination between our team, volunteers, municipalities, waste-management partners and corporate supporters.”

Bulky waste is the most evident example of why that preparation matters. Nearly 3 tonnes of it came out of the Lady’s Mile area, and removing that much in one morning only works when CFC has arranged the collection in advance.

A Cleanup for Everyone

We invited colleagues to bring their families, kids, and dogs along. After the cleanup, everyone could grab a cold drink and a snack, while the kids enjoyed ice cream and a DJ played music near the meeting point. Each volunteer also received a T-shirt designed for the day and a letter confirming their participation.

The T-shirts were designed in-house by our own design team. Rather than printing a logo on a blank tee, they built a set of illustrations around what people here actually recognize – the sea, the turtles, the flamingos of Akrotiri Salt Lake.

Francis Uvizeie, System Administrator at AdTech Holding, came from Paphos with his family to join:

“Although we live in Paphos, we were happy to make the trip to Limassol for a morning on the beach with our colleagues. I’d previously taken part in the carnival cleanup, which was quite tiring: we had to wait because we didn’t know exactly when the carnival would finish. This time, we could get straight to work, everything ran smoothly and was really well organized.

The beach was huge, and everyone spread out, so we didn’t realize how much waste we’d collected until the end. What surprised me most was the amount of bulky waste – fridges, washing machines. I even found a tractor wheel.”

For CFC, getting families involved is an important part of the cleanup:

“Environmental responsibility shouldn’t feel like something reserved for environmental organizations or activists. It should be part of everyday community life. When colleagues, friends and families participate together, volunteering becomes a shared experience rather than an obligation. Children also get to see from an early age that taking care of the place where they live is something completely normal.”

And, as Anna pointed out, spending a morning picking up litter can change what you notice afterward:

“Once you have personally spent a morning collecting litter, you tend to look at waste in public spaces very differently afterwards. That change in attitude is just as valuable as the cleanup itself.”

What Happened to the Waste?

Collecting the waste was only part of the job. Sorting it also mattered: the 200 bags of PMD were kept separate from general waste so they could be sent for recycling. Anna explained what happens after volunteers go home:

“Wherever possible, recyclable PMD materials are separated from general waste and sent to specialized recycling facilities. The remaining waste is handled through the appropriate waste-management channels. We also record the amount collected. This allows us to understand the scale of the problem and, importantly, measure the impact of each cleanup.”

On a beach, picking up plastic also helps keep it out of the sea. Lightweight packaging can easily blow or wash into the water, where it gradually breaks down into smaller pieces that are much harder to remove.

That’s why Anna described coastal cleanups as “a practical form of prevention,” while acknowledging that they are only part of the solution:

“Of course, cleanups alone can’t solve the entire problem. But they also help raise awareness and encourage people to think differently about how they use and dispose of plastic.”

Photo: City Friends Club

7 Cleanups and Counting

Our first cleanup with City Friends Club was in March 2023 at Svenja Beach in Pyrgos. A small team of employees collected 57 bags of PMD and filled two containers with mixed waste. We shared the story here, along with the office recycling and tree-planting initiatives we started around the same time.

Three and a half years later, our 7th cleanup brought more than 300 people to Lady’s Mile, with 200 bags of PMD collected alone. We’ve kept working with CFC throughout that time, and this year’s event gave us a chance to get more people involved.

These cleanups are part of our community work in Cyprus, alongside supporting local tech and startups and the social activities our teams choose themselves. They also reflect how we approach corporate social responsibility: through regular involvement and partnerships we continue to build over time.

As Anna put it:

“Partnerships like this allow us to turn local environmental initiatives into projects with visible and measurable results. And the longer we work together, the more we can achieve together.”

In a few months, flamingos will return to Akrotiri Salt Lake. Thanks to everyone who joined us on September 19, there will be 5.3 tonnes less waste on the beach and around the lake.

Our next planting and cleanup with CFC are already on the calendar. Follow City Friends Club for upcoming dates – we’d love to see you and your family at the next one.