Volunteers rise to the green challenge

Teams eager to take part in wide range of environmental duties

In 2017, Zhu Xianping, 58, a farmer in Shaanxi province, was asked by the head of her village to help organize an event to celebrate International Women's Day.

After racking her brain for days, Zhu thought of asking volunteers to pick up trash around the Shuanghe River near Gaoping village, Shuanghe town.

Feeling a little shy at first, Zhu announced her plan to a gathering of women held by the village committee. She asked those who wanted to volunteer to write down their names and phone numbers on a piece of paper she placed on a table. Eight women signed up.

Zhu's initiative has since evolved into a voluntary campaign involving more than 2,000 people in her hometown.

The activity is just one example of the many voluntary environmental services being organized nationwide.

China is forging ahead with the construction of ecological civilization, a concept promoted by President Xi Jinping for balanced and sustainable development that features harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature.

Guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization — which has as one of its 10 tenets the transformation of the Beautiful China Initiative into voluntary action for every Chinese person — voluntary environmental programs have witnessed robust development nationwide.

Nearly 40 percent of Chinese have taken part in such a program at least once, according to Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu.

More than 1.3 million voluntary environmental programs have been launched across the country, representing 20 percent of all voluntary programs, Huang said at a forum in June in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province.

The programs have become increasingly diversified, the minister stressed.

He said planting trees was one of the main voluntary environmental programs in the 1980s, but in recent years, volunteers have devoted themselves to many other activities, including river and forestry protection, biodiversity conservation, and public-interest litigation.