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Santander Bank Polska joins #trashchallenge

In 2009, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed the 22nd of April the International Mother Earth Day.

The goal of this special day is to promote environment-friendly behaviours such as sorting waste, saving energy or picking up waste. In many places around the world, various activities and campaigns take place to celebrate the day. One of them is the #trashchallenge which has become very popular worldwide as an initiative aimed at encouraging local community members to clean their neighbourhoods and share the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures online in social media. The #trashtag has given rise to hundreds of thousands posts on the Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and many other Internet communication channels.

The whole campaign started from a picture posted on Reddit by one of the users who wrote Here is a new #challenge for all you bored teens. Take a photo of an area that needs some cleaning or maintenance, than take a photo after you have done something about it and post it.

On April 8, the #trashchallenge reached Santander Bank Polska. On the occasion of the upcoming Mother Earth Day we decided to join the #trashchallenge. A group of employees from the Corporate Communications and Marketing Area left their desks and computers and went outside.

With gloves on their hands, equipped with litter bags and accompanied by a group of children they cleaned together the beautiful picnic area in Kampinos Forest called Polana Opaleń. This large forest clearing is situated near Warsaw and is one of the most scenic places in the whole area of Kampinos.

On the area of 20 hectares they collected 3.5 cubic meters of trash, including empty cans, canisters, bottles, electric bulbs, car tyres, plastic bags, paper etc. By taking part in the #traschchallenge we want to attract people’s attention to the problem of environmental pollution and the need to take care of our planet in order to make it a healthier and cleaner place to live.

If you want to change the world for the better, you should start from yourself. If you are not ready to join a campaign like this one, at least remember not to throw away rubbish in a careless way since the consequences of such carelessness are awful, as you can see on this video.

The #trashchallenge campaign is another activity taken up by the bank as part of our #ResponsibleBanking agenda which is one of the foundations of our development and growth in the future.

On March 30, 2019 we took part in WWF’s Earth Hour for the 10th time. On 8.30 p.m. we switched off the bank’s neon lights on the buildings of our main offices:

ο Atrium I in Warsaw
ο PFC in Andersa Square in Poznań
ο buildings at 11 Robotnicza Street and 8/10 Strzegomska Street in Wrocław

The lights-off event is a symbolic gesture showing that:
ο we think about the future,
ο we care for the next generations, our grandchildren and grand-grandchildren, who may face such challenges as clean water shortage or hunger and will not be able to see many beautiful landscapes or rare animal species.

Everyone who switches lights off on that day supports the appeal to end the devastating exploitation of natural resources and change everyday habits to help the environment.

The idea of the WWF Earth Hour is very simple ”Switch Light Off and Act Now” for the only plant in the universe which we know as capable to support human life. Sow what should we do on the daily basis:

  • switch off all unnecessary lights (both at home and at work)

  • eat and drink using reusable dishes (give up all disposable plastic dishes and cutlery)

  • dispose of electronic and electrical waste by returning them to special collection points ensuring the recovery and reuse of rare metals and other precious resources

  • go shopping with your own basket or a reusable textile bag

  • invest in advanced, energy-efficient heating technologies

The whole Santander Group, including Santander Bank Polska as its member, actively contributes to the achievement of the global goal which is to tackle the climate change and our participation in this event is a token of our strong commitment to natural environment, as one of the most important global challenges of our times.

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