Hong Kong protesters showed up the rest of the world’s demonstrators when, after a 2 million-strong march, they worked through the night to ensure not a scrap of trash was left in their wake.
The mass protests against an unpopular China extradition bill took place on June 16 and, after the 3km march was over, the diligent demonstrators worked into the night to ensure the streets they had marched on were not left strewn with litter.
Images circulated on social media showed young people working to pick up rubbish late at night, with a few doing a final sweep of the area the next morning.
This isn’t the first time Hong Kong protesters turned litter collectors after a march. Following the June 12 protests, demonstrators returned to the protest site to clean up after themselves.
The hardworking Hongkongers made a lot of other protesters look bad in comparison. When thousands of protesters gathered in London to show their opposition to President Donald Trump at the start of June, they left a trail of rubbish in their wake and were accused of hypocrisy for demonstrating against Trump’s climate policy while littering themselves.
Occupy ICE protesters in Portland sparked anger when they left their protest site looking like a scrap heap in 2018. Even the Dakota Pipeline protesters left millions of pounds of garbage behind when they were evicted from their demonstration site in 2017.