Sixty years ago, on this day, March 27th, 1966,
Another conservationist event occurred on 27 March 1966, when field biologists in the province of Scania in southern Sweden organized an effort to clean up a 20-kilometer long littered beach. This collective action was orchestrated by the local divisions, which strove to make the ‘otherwise so passive urban dweller go out and make an active contribution to beautify nature’. The action was inspired by the campaign Håll naturen ren! (Keep Nature Clean), which Naturskyddsföreningen had initiated in 1962.37 The young naturalists removed plastic packages, bottles, and gasoline drums, and received widespread media attention for their intervention.
Fältbiologen reported that 300 people had shown up to the event and that 2,300 bags of waste, almost 700 tons of litter, had been removed. The event was heralded as the greatest clean-up action in Scania.38
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 321ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Sweden was getting wealthy, (not as wealthy as it is now, obvs). And people were beginning to realise that wealth can bring or does bring environmental damage with it. And one of the things you then do is to try and make everything look pretty, so that you don’t see the damage. And one of the obvious things to do is a litter pick, which is what they did.
What I think we can learn from this is that we have been trying to bargain with the consequences of our own actions for six decades now longer, really, and it doesn’t work so well. I’m not saying that one shouldn’t litter pick or recycle. I’m saying that one shouldn’t pretend that those things are more than at best, at best palliatives, and that a far more fundamental set of changes and actions is required.
What happened next
About a year and a half later, there was the Swedish “environmental turn” in that questions of pollution, of heavy metals, pesticides, acid rain, etc, became front page news. And this led Swedish diplomats to push for a UN conference on the environment, which of course, eventually happened in 1972.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References
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Also on this day:
March 27, 1966 – The “Conservation Society” to be launched
March 27, 1971 – Norwegian Tabloid talks about the climate threat
March 27th, 1977- what we can learn from Dutch arrogance and aviation disasters