During the last weekend of September a series of initiatives involve citizens in the independent and spontaneous cleaning of urban centers and degraded areas. A gesture to show the demand for cleaner cities and prettier environments, a concrete act towards taking care of the world we live in. This is the Italian version of the initiative "Clean-up the World", born in Australia, which Legambiente organizes since 1994.

The Lecco club in recent years organized the day entrusting, in a perspective way, to the elementary schools children from Malgrate the cleaning of the green spaces of their city.

Lakes are a valuable environmental, cultural and economic resource filled with beautiful places and landscapes. Yet the ecological and tourist importance of lakes is often overlooked and their fragile ecosystem at risk: illegal dumping, illegal building, excessive captation, depletion of local flora and fauna threaten them. For this reason a monitoring and information campaign about the health of lake ecosystems, the Lakes Schooner, was born: a month to discover the abuses committed against the lakes but also an important opportunity to talk about quality tourism and sustainable economy, to encourage accommodation facilities towards a more environmental sustainable management of their structures, to promote policies to protect the coast and biodiversity.

This campaign is even more central for our territory, having our most characteristic and distinctive peculiarity in Lake Como, which is also an environmental, economic and cultural resource of primary importance but, at the same time, is extremely fragile and too often underestimated.

Since 2002, with the information campaign "La Carovana delle Alpi" Legambiente defends and promotes the Alpine region, a fragile ecosystem threatened by over-exploitation of its resources. From July to October the Legambiente clubs organize trips and meetings, converse with citizens, economic forces and institutions to stimulate a constructive discussion towards sustainable development.

Mal'aria is the protest campaign to shout that our lungs are busted!

The goals: to denounce the damage that pollution causes on health, encourage local authorities to find effective and lasting solutions and promote good practices of sustainable mobility.

The fight against the smog is one of the central issues of Legambiente and is confronted with daily determination by local clubs wherever it is necessary.

Throughout Italy, with NO SMOG as a common denominator, clubs organize blitzes against the failure of the authorities, protest by bicycles, air pollution monitoring, promotion of local projects for sustainable mobility.

Every winter Legambiente organizes activities at heights, other than skiing, to share the pleasure of a trip to the mountains and promote a reflection on the issues of land management and the use of resources. In many places, the winter tourism exclusively relies on the monoculture of ski fueling particularly impactful habits: large amounts of water and energy costs for artificial snow, continuous expansion of the ski areas in sensitive and protected territories, increase of traffic and smog for the hit and run skiing during the weekend, second homes business which consumes soil. The Nevediversa initiatives put first the extraordinary beauty of our mountain landscapes, a great and irreplaceable national treasure that we can protect by choosing a soft tourism driven by the desire to experience, before consuming.

Legambiente Lecco has organized for years a snowshoe hike by moonlight in Val di Mello (Valmasino - SO), to involve our local communities and show a different mountain in a night of community, reflection and fun.

Legambiente Lecco has been involved for years in interventions of environmental requalification and protection, taking action on protected areas and beyond.

Specifically, Legambiente Lecco manages::

• environmental maintenance of the Swamp of Brivio in the Adda Nord Park, Site of Community Importance (SCIs) for its central role in the migration of birds;

• management of path 1 in the Montevecchia e della Valle del Curone Regional Park, working to ensure proper usability of the paths.

Legambiente also operates with volunteer days in many parts of the territory, with paths cleaning actions and manteinance of the paths.

Legambiente Lecco partners with the Cultural District of Barro for the SprecoZero project.

In collaboration with the municipalities joined in the district, we are monitoring the shops, canteens and food services of our territory, with the aim to collect real data on food waste.

Concretely, the project starts with an operation of mapping of wastefulness through a simple questionnaire submitted to the operators, and continues with the analysis of data and proposal of counter-actions for the waste situation, such as the introduction of a doggy- bag for the store leftovers.

As part of the cultural change that Legambiente aims to develop, we believe that on the Lecco area is crucial, in the wake of the national legislative debate, to move forward a way of restriction of waste, "best practices" for the management of food, which are real scope of action of citizens and families.

The greatly positive environmental impact of a sustainable management of food production and distribution can only make this topic one of primarily relevance in the everyday work of Legambiente.

For many years Legambiente Lecco, through its volunteers, has entered in local schools. Collaborating with some of the teachers of schools of different degrees, we try to operate in the field of environmental education, in which the association has proven over time to be a reference point for operators and citizens.

Topics like recycling and reusing, energy conservation and waste management are built into educational activities and games, in order to use an easy and informal approach to stimulate reflections and to spread to younger generations a new way of thinking, more environmentally sustainable and less selfish, which is needed for a cultural change.

During this school year, the project specifically focuses on food and its impact on the environment: Legambiente volunteers have organized different activities depending on the age of the students to make them reflect on food production and how much the purchase and consumption of a product instead of another can have a big impact. It is a pilot project, with several proposals on random sampling of some classes with the idea of developing, for the future, a larger program for the whole territory.

Overall, Legambiente is willing to take action on any topic within its competence if requested from the schools, carrying to children and young people enthusiasm and skills to build a better future.