World Cleanup Day 2027 is on Monday

About World Cleanup Day

World Cleanup Day asks people in every country to spend part of one day picking up litter from streets, parks, beaches, riverbanks and forests, and to think about why so much waste ends up there in the first place. Cleanups move across the time zones in a single wave, and organizers use the day to push for better waste collection, less single-use packaging and more reuse and recycling.

The movement traces back to Estonia. In 2008 more than 50,000 volunteers there cleaned up litter across the whole country in a single day, an idea that grew into the network Let's Do It World, based in Tallinn. Its first global World Cleanup Day took place on September 15, 2018, and according to the organizers about 18 million people took part. In its early years the volunteer event was usually held on a Saturday in mid-September, so the exact date moved from year to year.

That changed when the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted resolution 78/122 on December 8, 2023, proclaiming September 20 as World Cleanup Day every year. The first UN-recognized observance was held in 2024. UN-Habitat now leads the UN side of the day with a yearly theme; for 2026 the UN chose food waste, under the title "From Clean Plates to Clean Cities."

In the United States, a separate volunteer event called National CleanUp Day is held on the third Saturday of September, so the two often fall within a day or two of each other.

Sources: United Nations: World Cleanup Day, World Cleanup Day (Let's Do It World): About, National CleanUp Day (US). How we check dates.

How to mark World Cleanup Day

• Register or join a local cleanup and bring gloves, a grabber and two bags, one for trash and one for recyclables.
• Pick a small patch you pass every day, such as a bus stop or a stretch of creek, and clear it with neighbors or coworkers.
• Note the most common items you find, then tell the local business or council responsible for them.
• Run a cleanup at a school, with a short talk on where litter goes when it rains.
• Do an at-home audit of food waste for a week, in line with the 2026 UN theme, and plan meals to cut it.
• Clear old files and unused accounts from your devices as well, since digital storage also uses energy.

World Cleanup Day dates