Wesnapback movement against littering worldwide
Wesnapback movement is an initiation of a young lady, which is started from USA sets a positive example for many people all over the world. Kaiti Galica, the tireless founder was our guest for an interview.
Kaiti Galica is always on the front. Photo: www.wesnapback.com
How is the Wesnapback movement started, what was the driving force? Are you the founder of it?
I am the founder of Wesnapback. I started in May 2016 and the movement began after my frustration for littering grew to an intolerable level. Every day, i would walk about a block away to Lincoln Road, which is a main strip in South Beach of business which had all my favorite lunch restaurants and my bank. I would walk past a parking lot that was constantly littered with trash, and each day I walked by it was all still there. I started wondering to myself, „who’s job is it to clean this up? The nearest business, the city?” And after many days of walking by and my frustration growing, I remembered one of my life mottos, „If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” So I did just that.
I went to college for marketing and in my current position at the time, I was working for a hospitality company and managing 3 venue’s social medias. My company had 35 venues all over the US and Puerto Rico, and somehow I managed to have the most successful and quickest growing social media’s of all venues in my company. I don’t know if its my generation, or the different levels of experience you can achieve when you have business hours to research and explore social media, but I was a pro.
As I started grabbing some pieces of trash, as much as my hands could manage, each time I passed this parking lot I would wonder how I could get others to join in my efforts. I was making a small difference in my own back yard, but if everyone made a difference in their own back yard too, think of the difference we could make! It suddenly dawned on me that I should utilize my experience and skill set professionally to create a social media to spread my movement.
I rapidly began searching hashtags and finding social media accounts and thousands of people who share my passion, and even many accounts with the same goal as mine! So many people are out there in the world are trying to influence their follows to live a more environmentally conscious lifestyle, and it was a beautiful and inspiring thing that I was, and still am, so excited to be a part of!
The Wesnapback sign. Photo: www.wesnapback.com
How the idea came to be an international movement?
It started out with me asking my friends to support. I wanted to clean up my city that so many tourist come in and destroy because they think of it as a party town. It didn’t take very long for me to have a larger view of trying to spread this movement to every corner of the world! Living in Miami, we have a lot of international people here on a working visa, or have just moved here from other states/countries. Eventually I began to tap into their resources with the whole idea of posting your SnapBack and telling your followers to do the same. Soon I was getting tagged in videos from a different country every week! It was super exciting and motivation to keep going!
A clean-up fighter woman. Photo: www.wesnapback.com
Which countries of the world have joined?
Excellent question 🙂
USA, Australia, Argentina, Uruguay, Switzerland, France, Taiwan, Amsterdam, Jamaica, India, England, Brazil, Canary Islands, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Dubai,Caribbean Islands, Iceland, Indonesia, Denmark, Holland, Bahrain, Morocco, Austria, Thailand, Italy, Jordan, Sweden, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Canada, Bahamas, South Africa, Copenhagen, Laos, Singapore, Cuba, Japan, Norway, and Myanmar…so far!
Where is the highest activity of them?
USA: Florida, NJ, Cali. Australia, and the UK.
Where is the worst waste enviroment of them?
Indonesia and India videos are pretty shocking, definitely the worst! Australia has some surprisingly littered areas as well.
What is your most significant achievement you proud of?
I have had some amazing videos sent to me; Someone SnappigBack on the red carpet at the Grammys, a celebrity UFC fighter, someone diving into a stream to get trash they see at the bottom, etc. But hands down my greatest accomplish in life is creating Wesnapback. I have people all over the world tagging and sending me videos, creating videos and mentioning me or writing Wesnapback in the sand. I have influenced so many people, andcomplete strangers, to start taking care of our planet who were never doing it before, and it is the most amazing feeling I have ever felt.
The Team. Photo: www.wesnapback.com
What is your opinion of the hungarian waste environment?
I am not too familiar with the Hungarian pollution issues, but from some brief research it seems that Air pollution and water pollution are the biggest issues. It sounds to me like there are a lot of factories or illegal dumping sights that are a real issue. It is one thing to try to spread awareness among the population to do their part, but this sounds like a much larger issue then regular civilians. If air pollution and water pollution levels are as high as they are, there really needs to be something done by the government. I know it takes time and money to make a difference if you have to change company protocols, but something should definitely be done before it is too late and this pollution spreads to an unrecoverable environment.
You can find WasteHunter’s previous international interview with the music artist Rüdiger Gleisberg right here.
