Listen to the author’s reading of the article.
”In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
Albert Camus, Return to Tipasa, 1953
A bright pink scrap on the pavement caught my eye. I stopped, impatiently waited for the right moment to apologize to my friend for interrupting, and pulled out my phone. The writing on that scrap, a cup sleeve, was a perfect match for an inside joke I had with someone. I had to send them a picture of it. Amidst a stream of people, my friend stood there as I angled for the perfect shot. The phone had to be parallel to the ground, the subject centered exactly, framed by just the right amount of concrete. Click. When I turned back, pleased with myself, my friend walked past me, picked the cup sleeve up with a napkin, threw it in the nearest trash can, and continued the story she was telling me.
I was paralyzed with admiration and embarrassment. I crouched over that bright pink scrap and worked to make it look good, yet it never crossed my mind that it wasn’t supposed to be there. Maybe common knowledge is blinding. There’s litter on the street sometimes. It’s normal. What can you do?
And at times, when the amount of litter was impossible to ignore, I’d walk past with my nose in the air, silently condemning those who caused it. But apparently that’s not the only answer to “what can you do?”
My friend’s action reminded me of two things. First, that litter is not normal, not the way it’s supposed to be. Second, it showed me how little it takes to act. It’s like the punchline of an iconic Kargin Cartoon (equal parts Armenian comedy classic and cultural brain rot): a girl wastes all three of her wishes making herself uglier, only to learn she could’ve just asked to be pretty: Wait, you could do that? I’d been mistaking wrong for ordinary all along.
Fortunately, my friend’s act isn’t as rare as it might seem. It brought to mind Hakob Mikoyan, who once inspired the same realization in me. When 42-year-old Hakob walks through the streets of Yerevan, some glance at him curiously, but most respond with unmistakable admiration and gratitude. Every day, Hakob calmly picks up litter across the city. But it wasn’t always that way. As a teenager, he would hike with friends in Vanadzor, Lori region. They would collect litter along the way and grumble in frustration at the mess people left behind. He admits it started as an extension of his parents making him keep his personal space, his room clean. And he hasn’t stopped expanding the boundaries of that personal space. He had been collecting litter his whole life without fully realizing why. “I was angry, I was fighting the trash itself,” he says. “I’d clean and clean, and it would never end. It started feeling meaningless. ‘Why clean, if it’s just going to pile up again?’ I got tired, disheartened.”
What was supposed to be a routine 10-minute meditation in a Vanadzor forest on October 24, 2021, became a turning point for him. He opened his eyes two hours later to the sun setting before him, with a completely new perspective. He had discovered mental garbage––temptation, lust, greed, pride, envy, hatred, even judging someone or lying. He realized these are all forms of that same garbage.
That experience helped him realize how the garbage outside is directly connected to the “garbage” in our minds: “I understood that the only thing one needs to fight against is themselves. When you win that fight and reach inner peace, you realize you don’t have any enemies left.”
Mikoyan believes you can’t clear your mind when the world around you is cluttered, because environment shapes consciousness. “Just like you can make your room messy while caught up doing things, feeling a little heavy, but then you have a bit of energy, and clean up the room, your mood improves significantly,” he explains.
We often get caught up with everyday obligations and switch to autopilot. In that state, we think we see and hear, but we’re not fully aware of our surroundings. “When someone throws garbage on the ground, they often don’t even realize what they’re doing. And because we know they don’t, we have to forgive them—and, gently, through our own example, bring them back into a cleaner space. Not through insults, but through kindness,” Hakob says. “Because if you insult people, you’re littering too.”
Ever since that meditation in the forest, Hakob’s mission has been to collect one bag of litter a day—every day with no breaks, for 20 years. There’s 16 more to go. Naturally, he’s inspired others to join Maqrapatum, the movement he founded, and to take their own steps toward making our surroundings a little better. When I first met him at a mantra singing ceremony over a year ago, I became one of those inspired people. I collected a bag of litter, but then got caught up in everyday obligations, to the point where I couldn’t identify a bright pink scrap laying on the ground as litter. But constantly being in the process of improving is essential to Hakob’s philosophy. “The bible says that God created the world in seven days, but I don’t think the seven days are over,” he says. “If we were perfect, there would be no point in living.”
It’s remarkable how a person’s drive to be and do better can inspire other people. Fortunately, people with that drive aren’t as rare as one might think. In 2022, Hakob came across a Facebook post by Dana Vergilyush inviting people to join her in cleaning up litter at the Children’s Railway. Dana had just moved to Yerevan from Rostov, Russia with her daughter. She was working in IT, but she also organized cleanup events and recycling drives. When she came to Yerevan, she simply wanted to continue living an eco-friendly lifestyle. “I just wanted to connect with people who are into this, who care, who might want to join forces and do something together,” Dana says. “It’s an important part of my life, and I’m interested in talking to people who value this too and try to help the planet selflessly, to inspire others and live sustainably themselves.”
At first, she would actively look for eco-centers and people involved in eco-activism. After not finding much, but seeing how litter and garbage were an issue in Yerevan, she realized there was a lot of work to be done. She saw potential. “I understood I could be useful here,” she says.
Locals recommended the location of the first cleanup to Dana in April 2022. Some people had done cleanups there before but stopped––they felt it was pointless. They’d clean up only to find the area trashed again soon after. Many burn out for that reason. “About 75 people showed up to that cleanup,” Dana recalls. “We cleared a huge area, collected tons of trash. We sorted plastic, glass, and metal.” With Hakob’s help, municipal services hauled it all away. Seeing the difference between “before and after” was incredible.
A TV station came, the Deputy Minister of Environment was there as well. In Rostov, where Dana had also run cleanups, she would never see that many people show up. But here, the response was massive. Amazed by the moment, she said during an on-camera interview, “We’re going to do this every week now.”
And so, 149 weeks later, the 150th cleanup will take place. That initiation became GreenGreen, founded by Dana herself. Its mission: to develop a sense of responsible ownership toward Armenia’s natural environment and promote sustainable use of resources and public spaces.
She finds it surprising how many Armenians are vocal about loving their homeland and city, yet litter in the streets while keeping their apartments spotless. There’s a disconnect.
After years of organizing clean ups, Dana has identified a pattern. Large amounts of trash pile up in abandoned spots. When an area isn’t cared for—owned but not maintained—it becomes a dump.
Half-ruined buildings, neglected construction sites, empty lots all attract trash. When planning cleanups, they look for abandoned areas because that’s where the most garbage accumulates. They’ve started testing the broken windows theory, proposed in 1982, which holds that visible signs of disorder, such as broken windows, graffiti, or litter, encourage further disorder and can lead to serious crime. Dana and the volunteers have found it to be true.
Some places are convenient for littering. There’s no bin nearby, or it’s a favorite smoking or drinking spot. People think, “No one will see me throw this into the bushes.” But when an area is clean, it’s hard to be the first one to mess it up. For less informed, less aware, and less financially secure people, even that doesn’t work as a deterrent.
“These people tend to care less about it. They believe if there’s no trash bin nearby, that’s the government’s fault,” Dana says. “They always blame someone else. There’s a deep dissatisfaction with life that spills into this behavior. There’s this constant sense that someone else should fix things, that someone else is to blame.”
Though areas cleaned by GreenGreen often get littered again, it never breaks Dana’s spirit. She never expected those places to remain clean forever, but she sees progress.
“We don’t do cleanups just to clear land. We do them to raise awareness. Even if the spot gets trashed again, those who came will remember what they saw, what they felt. Especially if it was their first time. They’ll think twice next time they want to litter. And others—passersby, drivers—see us and start paying attention,” Dana says. “We always post content on social media. People watch. They root for us. People see what we’re doing and they want to help. We ask at every event, ‘Who’s here for the first time?’ And hands go up, every single time. That’s what keeps me going. We do see the results, in people, in the environment, in the energy.”
Some people can’t join, no matter how much they want to. But they start cleaning near their homes. “They say we inspired them,” Dana says. “They used to think it was hopeless, but now they feel they can make a difference.”
The Yerevan Municipality now funds parts of their work—environmental education in kindergartens and covers the rent for the eco-center. They also supply bags and haul away the trash they collect. “Honestly, I never expected to collaborate with them. But my contact info was public, and they reached out.” Dana says, adding that after she posted a Telegram group for cleanups, it spread quickly and soon after, the head of municipal services called to ask what they needed.
Dana doesn’t want to see a thousand people living a perfect eco-friendly life. She wants to see a million people doing at least something.
“I really want people to understand that everything is connected,” she says. “If you throw trash into a river, it comes back to you. Even if people say they don’t care about the environment, I want them to understand this: at the very least, they’re hurting themselves.”
And that thread of thought reminded me of Vazgen Sargsyan’s speech on Public TV in 1999: “It is better to light a single candle than to endlessly complain about the darkness. Let us help one another light our candles, and I am certain that before long, Armenia will be illuminated. No economic program or foreign aid can lift a country unless each of us feels both the owner’s and the servant’s responsibility toward it. What we need is a revolution within our souls and our ideas; without that, governments and programs will continue to change, yet the cart will never move forward. Heroism and patriotism are not confined to the battlefield. How are a good teacher, a diligent worker, or a devoted farmer any less heroic or patriotic? What we must do is create an environment where heroism and patriotism can be lived every day, above all, through our own example.”
And luckily, dear reader, this story doesn’t end with my friend—with Hakob and Dana—whose actions might seem rare. There will always be litter on the streets, but the spark to make the world a little brighter is in your own hands.
Cover photo by Aram Kirakosyan.
LIFESTYLE
The Runway
The October issue of SALT takes you through spaces where memory and imagination intertwine—from the house-museum of Lusik Aguletsi, who transformed remembrance into a radical act of cultural resilience, to an abandoned clock factory reborn through the vision of contemporary artists, onto the runways of Yerevan Fashion Week, and finally to a story of how one person’s initiative is transforming the face of the country.
Lusik Aguletsi’s Radical Act of Remembering
In a modest Yerevan neighborhood, the Lusik Aguletsi House-Museum stands as a sanctuary of memory. Through art, carpets, jewelry and traditional dress, Aguletsi preserved the soul of a vanishing Armenia, transforming remembrance into a living, radical act of cultural resilience.
Read more
Hakop and Dana represent those who truly care about their home and homeland. These people are but a glimmer of hope for the bright future of Armenia.
The Armenian government and its ministries can play a major role in educating the youth and citizens in keeping their living environment free of pollution and litter. This education has to start from a very early stage of life and become a part of the society’s DNA. Consider Singapore, it has very strict regulations in keeping the nation-state clean and enforces them with harsh penalties, even for spitting on street pavements!
As a small nation we need to understand that Armenia is our home, just like the four walls that surround and shelter us on daily basis. We need to take pride in cleanliness and beauty of our cities, towns and villages. Given our ancient culture and history, Armenia should be the Switzerland of the region. Let us forget about the Soviet legacy and instead bring to life the visionary thoughts of our nation’s hero, Vazgen Sargsyan- as noted in this great article.
Dear Ari, thank you for reading and for sharing your thoughts! I truly appieciate it!