Afternoon of September 16
A SALT student's cleanup record

Green Action Challenge × World Cleanup Day 2026, Midterm Update

Our Green Neighborhood Map,
Made by the Steps of 26 Students

🏫 A story about our students working together

September 10 – 25, 2026

Hello! We are happy to share news from Green Action.
This is part of the World Cleanup Day award.
I am Kwon-sun Yoo, your newsletter editor.

Here is a story about our students. On September 10, SALT joined ITACITY. Over two weeks, 26 students logged 32 cleanup records on the app around our town. Together, they picked up 2,182 pieces of trash. Across Korea, 1 out of every 13 helpers was a SALT student.

Before looking at numbers, we want to share our students' words first. Their stories show why they stepped outside again to help our neighborhood.

🗺 NEIGHBORHOODS SALT CARED FOR TOGETHER

The steps of 26 students connected 12 neighborhoods

Students walked around their own towns and near the school. One person's record is just a small dot on a map. But when we bring 26 records together, they connect 12 neighborhoods. Their steps reached all the way from Bundang, Suji, and Wirye to Gaepo-dong in Seoul.

Green areas = places where SALT students cleaned up and left records
Dark lines = paths walked
September 12–23

One small record is just a dot. But when we put them together, they make a map of our town. This map shows us right away where trash gathers. Every record our SALT students made helps our neighborhood stay strong and clean, even when things change.

🔎 SEPTEMBER CLOSE-UP

Dochon-dong: Every street leaves different clues behind

Half of the clues our SALT students found were hidden right here in Dochon-dong in Seongnam, near the school. When we matched all 875 items of trash to the nearest streets (within 30 meters), a story came out. The thicker and darker the lines on the map, the more trash clues students found every 100 meters.

Thicker, darker lines = more items found per 100m
Gray = streets with no records
September 13–23

When we compared the clues on each street side by side, every street told a totally different story.

We compared streets that were at least 90 meters long with 25 or more items recorded

• The shop alley: Mostly cigarette butts
  Dochon-ro 7beon-gil alone gave us 430 items of trash. That is almost half of all the trash in Dochon-dong. For every 100 meters students walked, they found 72 items, and 83% of them were cigarette butts. This was our first clue in the busy alley filled with restaurants and bars, just 100 meters from SALT.
• Apartment paths: Mostly plastic wrap
  When we looked closely at paths inside apartment complexes, plastic wrap came out on top at 44%. This was the only area where plastic wrap was higher than cigarette butts.
• Dochon-ro 26beon-gil: Filled with paper
  On Dochon-ro 26beon-gil, paper was the main item at 48%, passing cigarette butts at 41%.

Dochon-ro 7beon-gil: The street corner where butts gather

We made a 3D map of the street corner where they found the most cigarette butts, about 80 meters on each side. We drew the buildings with their real heights and colored the ones with shops orange to highlight the clues. (We did not include any shop names.)

Building height = real number of floors
Orange = buildings with shops
Building data © VWorld, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport

• Shops on floor 1, homes upstairs
  Out of 27 buildings in the picture, 9 had restaurants, bars, or convenience stores. Official city records call most of them homes, but our students found the real clue on the street: they are mixed buildings with shops on floor 1 and homes upstairs.
• Right in the middle of a narrow alley
  In just one small 10-meter square, students found 67 cigarette butts, the highest spot. Out of 357 butts found on Dochon-ro 7beon-gil, 81% were gathered within less than 20 meters of a restaurant or bar.

Even in the same neighborhood, each street has different trash depending on how people use it. These clues found by our students point out which places need our care first. When we look at these streets again, we will see how much our town has changed.

Three zones in Dochon-dong

Three spots where litter gathered, each for a different reason

When we mapped the Dochon-dong litter data, the worst spots fell into three zones. The taller the bar on the map, the more litter we found there.

Bar height = items picked up at that spot (25 m × 25 m square)
Shapes = three zones · Blue water = Docheoncheon Stream

Based on SALT student records from 13 to 28 September. Numbers in the section above are as of 24 September, so they may differ slightly.

What does each zone need?

🧩 CLUES LEFT BY TRASH

Who was here, and what did they do?

Leftover trash tells a story about what happened in that spot. We placed labels on the trash in the photos, without any brand names.

September 13
A bench in Jeongja-dong, Bundang, recorded by a SALT student

A cup noodle container, a water bottle, and wooden chopsticks were left on the bench, with the cup noodle lid and a small piece of packaging on the ground. Since most of these are items people often buy at a convenience store, someone likely sat down to enjoy a snack and left them behind. How many people were here? When did they visit?

Morning of September 18
A bag collected by SALT students in the alley beside the school

A bag filled by SALT students in the alley beside the school contained pieces of newspaper, a face mask, a plastic cup, a straw, and a piece of wire. Most of these are small and light, so they are easy to miss.

💬 IN THE STUDENTS' WORDS

“Doing it at school with my friends was so much fun”

After picking up trash, students can leave a note. Here are three notes written by our SALT students.

Where this photo was taken: found using the location recorded at that moment. Due to a small location difference (about 10m), we cannot tell the exact gap between the buildings.

In the alley beside the school building with friends
Morning of September 18

We shared these notes anonymously, fixing only the spelling. The gray line under each note shows the original Korean words. Hearts cover faces in the photos.

It was fun with friends, rewarding for our neighborhood, and helpful to others. The real reason our students went back outside is captured in these words, which tell us more than numbers ever could.

🌱 ONE MORE MONTH

The challenge continues until October 31

Thank you to our SALT students and teachers for looking closely at the ground and caring for our town. To the 23 students who have not made a record yet, come join us today. When everyone's records come together, our strength to protect our neighborhood grows even bigger. 🌱

For questions about applying for or joining the World Cleanup Day International Award,
please message the ITASEOUL KakaoTalk channel.

ITASEOUL (non-profit)     itaseoul@itaseoul.org     kywa.ita.city

Period: September 10, 2026 (SALT joined) to September 25 (last activity September 23)
public activity records of 49 SALT members (0 staff). National figures: ITACITY public activity records, September 7–25 (343 people). Dochon-dong street analysis: 875 item records within 1km of central Dochon-dong, each matched to the nearest OSM street (within 30m)
Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors
ITACITY citizen cleanup records (CC BY-NC 4.0)