The fight against litter starts with our own steps
On Sunday, August 24, 2025, the club’s children and their parents did a great job. In addition to the hike, we also initiated a cleanup. With that goal in mind, armed with cleanup supplies, we set off toward the Aparan Reservoir. Even from the starting point, it was clear we had a lot of work to do, and we weren’t wrong. In just one hour, we collected 28 bags of 120-liter trash.
About 80% were plastic bottles. Many bottles were buried so deep in the soil that they seemed to have roots… This image clearly shows how many years it takes for plastic to decompose and how much damage it causes to nature. Those bottles turn into microplastics, poisoning the soil, water, animals, and ultimately, human life.
With this initiative, the children not only cleaned the reservoir shore but also learned the most important lesson: we must protect our nature right now so that it’s not too late tomorrow. The youngest participant in the cleanup, Araks, watched from her mother’s arms as her mom and others tried to help nature a little.
Summarizing the words and conversations of the children during the cleanup, we make this appeal on their behalf: “Please, do not throw trash in nature. We don’t want to come back tomorrow and pull the same bottles out of the ground. Our places for games and hikes, and nature and the environment in general, should be clean, not a landfill. When walking, we should hear the pleasant sound of grass and leaves, not the unpleasant sound of plastic and broken bottles. If everyone takes back what they brought, our Armenia will be beautiful and clean.”
Our day didn’t end only with the environmental initiative. After the cleanup, we also visited the St. Paul-Peter Church located on the shore of the Aparan Reservoir, which was built in the first half of the 5th century. In the late 5th or early 6th century, Prince Grigor Gntuni reconstructed the temple from the inside into a horseshoe shape, and from the outside into a rectangular altar-domed church, attaching powerful dome-bearing wall pillars to the longitudinal walls.
The Paul-Peter Church of Zovuni is the first example in Armenian architecture of a new and most common church building composition: the domed hall.
We are grateful to all the small and large participants who contributed their strength to a clean and healthy Armenia. We also thank the RA Ministry of Environment for their support in transporting the trash.
The Ministry’s Facebook page covered the cleanup initiated by the club, stating:
“Young mountaineers clean nature:
At the initiative of the “4 Peaks” Mountain Club, cleanup activities were organized in the area of the Aparan Reservoir and the outskirts of Yeghipatrush village. Children participated in the event, for whom it became not only a practical experience of caring for nature but also an educational event. The coastal zones of the reservoir are often burdened with trash, which harms both the aquatic environment and the surrounding nature. During the event, the children were also presented with the causes of trash accumulation and its consequences on the ecosystem.
Such initiatives are especially important for the younger generation, as the environmental mindset and sense of responsibility formed from an early age become the foundation for a conscious attitude toward nature in the future.”
