Students from a primary school in Xiangyang, Hubei, pick up litter beside a river at a cleaning event. [Photo by Yang Tao/For China Daily]

The nation in action

On the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Tsering Chozom and her squad of volunteers swept vast amounts of waste off major highways that bring millions of tourists to the region every year.

Since 2015, more than 200,000 travelers have taken part in the cause by helping local volunteers pick up trash along the "high roads to heaven".

On a national scale, another million people have signed up for the Beautiful Travel program that calls for civility and eco-conscious behavior as tourists.

Lin Peng, a young cyclist and travel aficionado, was alarmed at the damage that discarded waste caused in the sacred highlands when he rode his tricycle along the National Highway 318 from the southwestern province of Sichuan to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet autonomous region.

It took him 92 days to collect non-degradable trash, fill woven bags and hitchhike to the nearest disposal facility.

"I collected more than 500 bags of trash, and that didn't even make 1 percent of the waste I saw along the way," he said in an interview with Xinhua after coordinating a World Cleanup Day activity in his native Jiangxi province.

Lin soon plans to embark on another project to clean up the surrounding areas of Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake in China, in a 500-kilometer-long journey that will take several months.

"My goal is to pick up all the trash scattered across the country, and with my own actions influence more travelers and ultimately society," he said.

"Where there is a will, every day can be and should be 'Cleanup Day'," says Ma Yongjian, a volunteer from Beijing who recently did "plogging" - jogging while picking up trash - with his friends in Yudong Park in the northwest of the city.