Frequently asked questions

On the home page you can filter all actions by district and date. Alternatively, navigate directly on the map. Every Berlin district also has its own page with all its actions, active initiatives and a calendar subscription.

That depends on the initiative. Some do weekly neighbourhood rounds, others larger actions once a month. An initiative's profile shows its usual schedule.

Usually nothing. Gloves and bin bags are often provided by the initiative. Each action lists what to bring and what is provided.

Your confirmation is stored locally in your browser, not in an account. This is a deliberate choice: we do not want to track anyone across pages or devices, and you should be able to use cleanups.berlin without signing in. As a consequence, your confirmation is device-specific; if you want to change or withdraw it, that has to happen on the same device and browser you confirmed with.

Your confirmation is still valuable to the initiative. It helps with planning, especially when it arrives before the cleanup action. The earlier you confirm, the better the initiative can estimate how many people will come and organise the equipment accordingly.

Directly at cleanups.berlin/melden: upload a photo, check the location on the map, send. Berlin initiatives see your report and can clean the spot during a cleanup action. All reports and their status are shown on the hotspot map. Bulky waste and illegal dumping are handled by the Ordnungsamt (the district public order office); the report form redirects you there in that case.

Essentially motivation, a meeting point and a few bin bags are enough. It is worth taking a look at the map first: maybe there is already an initiative in your neighbourhood you can simply join. For how to build your own initiative, find fellow campaigners and plan first actions: wirBERLIN has put together checklists in German and English. At Kehrenbürger you can also order a free cleaning kit with bin bags and grabbers. Once your initiative is up and running, you can sign up at cleanups.berlin and make your actions visible.

Kehrenbürger is a service run by BSR, Berlin's waste management service: initiatives can order equipment there, and BSR collects the rubbish they gather. Kehrenbürger also keeps a calendar of all actions registered with it. Many of the initiatives active in Berlin today would not exist without that initial push. The team does great work.

cleanups.berlin solves a different task. Initiatives maintain their own profile and create dates themselves, changing or cancelling them at short notice. The actions appear on a Berlin-wide map and on the district pages, can be embedded on your own website and subscribed to via calendar subscription. The two complement each other.

Enter once, visible in many places: your actions appear on the Berlin map, on the district page of your neighbourhood, and can be subscribed to via calendar. Anyone searching the web or asking an AI assistant for cleanup actions in Berlin will find your dates.

You keep full control: create a date, change it at short notice, cancel it in extreme weather. That happens immediately and independently, without consultation or waiting time.

Anyone who has embedded your action list on a website automatically sees changes and cancellations. Entering once is enough.

No. And it will stay that way. cleanups.berlin is a non-profit project with no intention of making money. We will not introduce fees.

Get in touch by email at hallo@cleanups.berlin or write to us on Instagram. We will then send you a join link with which you set up your profile and can enter dates right away. The link is valid for 30 days; if it has expired, we will get back to you and send a new one.

cleanups.berlin uses no passwords. Instead, we send you a one-time link by email every time you sign in: click, signed in, done. The link is valid for 30 minutes; after that you stay signed in for 30 days and do not have to sign in again.

Important: the link signs you in on the device and browser where you open it. If you receive the link on your phone but would rather work on the computer, open it there.

If the link does not arrive: check your spam folder. If it has expired: simply request a new one.

Yes. In the management area under “Members” you can invite further people by email. Each person gets their own access with a one-time link and can enter and edit dates. You do not need a shared email address.

No. You maintain your dates yourself in the management area, whenever and however often you like. There is no editorial team collecting information or waiting for input. When you enter a cleanup action, it appears on cleanups.berlin right away.

Not at present. Initiatives use very different websites and formats; a reliable automatic import could not be built on top of that. The risk would be too high that changes, cancellations or postponed dates are not carried over correctly and wrong information appears on cleanups.berlin. Dates are therefore entered once, directly in the management area. Recurring actions can be duplicated quickly via a copy function: create once, generate several follow-up dates in one go.

No. You enter dates yourself; cleanups.berlin does not post on your channels on its own. We do, however, plan to provide ready-made templates for announcements and reports that you can share on Instagram, WhatsApp or other channels with one click. The templates should also be available in English on request, so that initiatives with international participants do not have to produce their own translation.

In the management area under “Embed” you will find a ready-made embed code that you can pass on to your web team. They only have to add it once, after that everything runs automatically. If you need support with embedding, we are happy to help: hallo@cleanups.berlin

That depends on how your website embeds the widget. With the normal route, confirming works directly. With some website builders (such as Wix or WordPress.com) the browser prevents the confirmation from being saved. In that case, visitors can confirm directly on cleanups.berlin; the link to each cleanup action is visible in the widget.

The share link determines where the share button in the embedded widget points: the address your visitors pass on when they recommend a cleanup action. Leave it empty if the share button may point to cleanups.berlin. Enter your own website if recommendations should point to your site instead.

cleanups.berlin is not a commercial service and does no marketing in the usual sense. What we do: we optionally ask initiatives whether we may share photos of found litter (objects, no people) on our Instagram account to draw attention to the initiative. The aim is more turnout for the initiatives, not advertising for cleanups.berlin. Consent is voluntary, can be withdrawn at any time, and is found in the management area under the profile settings.

Only what you enter: action data, initiative profile info. No tracking cookies, no advertising. Details in the privacy policy.