Democracy and picking up the trash

At the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference at the end of August 2025, a Polish politician made an interesting declaration. After two hours of in-depth dialogues with youth representatives around the region, and reading through our five recommendations for action we want to see from the Parliamentarians, he had a question for us: “when you see trash on the street, do you pick it up?”. 

Photo: Ugnė Budriūnaitė/ReGeneration 2030

The politician said that he thinks young people want rights, but not responsibility. And on the first half, I think he is totally right - we do want rights. In our recommendations, we asked for the right to a stable climate; the right to a living Baltic Sea; and the right to vote on decisions that affect us. But what about the second half - do we not take any responsibility?

What the politician perhaps didn’t realise is that the 135 young people he was addressing are some of the most active citizens you can find in the Baltic Sea region. He was talking to, for example, two representatives of Protests, the Latvian youth movement, who have dedicated years of their lives to training other youth in environmental issues and drafting potential legislation to protect their country’s future. Maybe he didn’t realise that it was also the Green Youth Movement of Denmark that he spoke to, many of whom spent their summer holidays preparing a blockade of the financiers of Norway’s fossil fuel industry, to demand the change that scientists desperately implore governments to make. 

He probably hadn’t realised how many volunteer hours had been spent by the youth he addressed, democratically planning the event, and then, piece by piece, cookie-by-cookie, sleeping-bag-by-sleeping-bag, breathing it to life. (I just ran a guesstimate - it’s about 3,792 hours between all of us). 

Volunteers preparing for the youth forum leading up to the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference. Photo: Matilda Agdler/ReGeneration 2030

To me, it’s these acts of labour that are the true face of active democracy. Because democracy is not just, as another politician described during the same panel, “the rule of law plus voting for representatives”. It’s deeper than that. Democracy is our ability to have a meaningful say over our collective lives. And to have that kind of democracy, you need people to take the responsibility of going out there and spreading the word. Knocking door-to-door to let people know there is an election soon, and what their options are. Holding meetings to make sure folk in your town know how a proposed golf development is going to impact your island’s ecosystem, and what we can do about it. Spending days in workshops and meetings discussing potential policy recommendations and which ones will be most effective before you present them to politicians.

We have a long, proud tradition of this kind of active democracy in our region. Right now, it’s under attack, but the actions of the youth at ReGeneration Week show that our generation is serious about building it back better. Contrary to what the politician on the panel might think, I see how we take responsibility day after day, week after week, year after year, to build a future worth fighting for.

And yeah, sometimes we also pick up trash off our streets. 

By Keira Dignan, Secretary-General of ReGeneration 2030

Want to take up your responsibility to fight for a better future? Sign up to the Big ReGeneration Week Debrief and Planning on 30th September at 17.00 CEST here.