VEENENDAAL – Tjeerd de Vries from Veenendaal retired five years ago. When he walked to Rhenen to bring his former boss a present for all his years of work, he saw so much waste that he had to do something with it. He grabbed his bike and clothespin and headed out to clean up. Now five years later, he has gathered a whole team around himself and collective waste is collected.
Tjeerd collected 50 volunteers in 5 years for his Team Clean that collects waste in Veenendaal
After Tjeerd had cleaned up on his own for a few months, he thought it would be much more fun and faster to clean up with a group. That is why he made an appeal to RTV Utrecht. “I thought: I will try to form a team through the mediation of RTV Utrecht,” says Tjeerd.
And it worked! Tjeerd received various reactions from residents of Veenendaal. Marcelle van Loon, for example. She saw the item on television and decided to help too. In the meantime, she kept seeing a lady walking around in her street. “I thought what is she doing here? And then she told me that she was in contact with Tjeerd,” says Marcelle.
Little by little the group grew and there are now more than fifty volunteers active at Team Clean Veenendaal. The volunteers all walk through their own neighborhood once a week, so that their neighborhood stays clean.
From Veenendaal to Rhenen
But the Cuneraweg, which runs from Veenendaal to Rhenen, is also a road where a lot of waste is dumped. That is why a large group of volunteers walks down this road once a month, to keep nature clean there too. “It’s so tasty,” says Marcelle. “You’re outside, you’re on the move and it’s good for old people. And it’s much more fun and sociable in such a group.”
Team Clean Veenendaal is cleaning up the Cuneraweg in collaboration with ZAAP from Rhenen. The Veenendalers walk from Veenendaal in the direction of Rhenen and vice versa. In this way the residents work together to ensure that the environment is clean again.
dead squirrel
It sounds nice, but the volunteers also think it’s outrageous that there is so much junk. “I recently found a dead squirrel in the forest, which had bled to death from the tab of a can of RedBull,” says Tjeerd. “It would be good if they showed that in schools, people have to become aware!”
“We sometimes say: if we didn’t do this and everyone walks with their knees in the waste, something would change,” adds Marcelle. “We are all concerned with the environment and the living environment and I’m doing it for my grandchildren. It shouldn’t look like this!”
5 years voluntary
The Veen group was thanked this week by the municipality of Veenendaal for their efforts over the past five years, because without them, Veenendaal would not look like this. “Tjeerd has been a huge puller in this,” says Marcelle. “He has only one goal and that is to make Veenendaal the cleanest city in the Netherlands!”