On 20 September 2026, millions of people across more than 190 countries will step outside, pick up a bag, and clean their piece of the planet for World Cleanup Day. This year, Applied Materials employees across six regions in Asia, including China, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, will once again be part of this global movement.
That single day is the visible tip of a much bigger idea. World Cleanup Day began in Estonia in 2008, when 50,000 people cleaned an entire country in five hours. Since 2018 it has grown into the world's largest civic action for a waste-free world — coordinated by the NGO Let's Do It World (LDIW) — and in 2024 it earned a place on the official United Nations calendar. Last year alone, an estimated 25 million people took part across 190 countries, with visibility reaching an estimated 2.4 billion people worldwide (Meltwater-verified). This year's campaign, "Strive for Five," is built on a simple but powerful premise from social science: once roughly 5% of a population takes visible, collective action, that action can become lasting societal change. The goal isn't just a clean day — it's a permanent shift in how people relate to waste.
Let's Do It World recently had the chance to interview Katie Ferrick, Managing Director of Global Community Affairs at Applied Materials. It was a genuinely interesting conversation, offering a valuable look at how the business sector views and engages with global environmental action.
This is how Katie Ferrick opened our conversation: "Applied Materials employees have always shown up for the planet — Leading with responsibility and integrity, Applied and the Applied Materials Foundation support initiatives that enable individuals to learn, grow and thrive, as well as those that strengthen the vitality and resilience of our communities and environment. World Cleanup Day gives that same instinct a global stage and a single shared date."
Applied's own record backs that up. Our annual EarthWorks campaign — running each year from April to June, covering Earth Day to World Environment Day — has already mobilized thousands of employees worldwide to participate in this environmental campaign in spring 2025, expanding our collective impact as they explored the natural world and inspired action for environmental progress.
World Cleanup Day empowers Applied to advance a culture of environmental action. Through the Let’s Do It World network, the company joins millions of people worldwide in a synchronized movement united by a common purpose.
Environmental sustainability is an important part of Applied Materials’ commitment to creating positive impact in the communities where we operate. As a company dedicated to delivering material innovation that changes the world, we recognize our responsibility to help address global challenges such as waste pollution and environmental degradation.
World Cleanup Day provides a powerful platform to turn that commitment into action. It brings together employees, community partners, and citizens around a shared purpose, and aligns closely with our culture of volunteerism and community engagement. By participating, we can contribute to healthier local environments while experiencing the powerful impact of collective action across the region.
Asia is a critical market for Applied Materials and a key region for our community engagement and sustainability efforts. Bringing together six markets reflects both the breadth of our presence in Asia and the shared commitment across all our employees to making a positive environmental impact.
It’s an incredible opportunity to engage employees in an impactful campaign that meaningfully addresses local environments while contributing so visibly to a larger regional movement. Each location has selected activities that are relevant to its local ecosystem, whether that is rivers, wetlands, coastlines, mangroves, parks, or urban communities. By connecting these efforts under one regional campaign, we can amplify our collective impact and demonstrate what is possible when employees across Asia unite around a common cause.
Success goes beyond the amount of waste collected. We certainly want to make a measurable environmental impact, but we also hope to inspire long-term environmental stewardship, strengthen community partnerships, and deepen employee sense of purpose and impact across Asia.
Last year's campaign demonstrated the power of collective action. Across six regions, we organized 12 cleanup events that engaged more than 550 employees and family members and removed nearly 800 kilograms of waste from forests, rivers, lakes, and coastal areas.
Building on that momentum, success for this year's campaign would mean not only achieving meaningful environmental outcomes but also encouraging more people to take ownership of protecting their communities and natural ecosystems. If participants walk away feeling inspired to continue making a difference long after the campaign ends, we will consider that a significant achievement.
I would encourage them to get involved. World Cleanup Day is a powerful example of how collective action can create meaningful change. Every organization, regardless of size, has an opportunity to contribute to its community and environment.
Our experience has shown that initiatives like these create benefits beyond the cleanup itself. They strengthen employee engagement, foster teamwork, and build community partnerships, increasing the velocity of impact and productivity through collaboration. When hundreds of employees across Asia volunteered in this effort last year, they felt a sense of purpose and connection from making a tangible difference together.
The most important step is simply to start. When businesses, non-profit organizations, and community members work together, we can achieve a far greater impact than any one group could accomplish alone, and help create a cleaner, more sustainable future for everyone.
Local Focus, Global Alignment - Local action creates global impact. When businesses, nonprofits and communities take that first step together, we can build a cleaner, more sustainable future for everyone.
Participation like this doesn't just benefit one side of the partnership — it ripples outward to four different audiences at once. To the world, it's one more visible, credible signal that businesses are willing to act, not just publish sustainability reports; every corporate partner that shows up publicly lowers the barrier for the next one to join, which is the "tipping point" logic the whole campaign is built on. To Applied Materials, it's a chance to connect a global workforce around one shared action on one shared day, across six markets that don't often get a unified moment like this — and it gives measurable stories to tell, about people, in specific places, doing a specific thing. To employees, it's an invitation that doesn't require a plane ticket or a special skill, just showing up locally, in Bangalore or Seoul or Shanghai, and being part of something with a genuinely global scale behind it. And to Let's Do It World's network, it's a partner who participates in the same markets where LDIW's own affiliate network is already active on the ground, and that kind of on-the-ground alignment is what makes a corporate partnership durable year over year.
Applied Materials is one company, in one industry, showing up across six markets — but World Cleanup Day only works at the scale it's built for when more companies do the same. If your organization is weighing whether corporate participation is worth it, here's the honest case: it doesn't require a large budget, a new program, or a long lead time. It requires a date on the calendar, a willingness to let employees show up locally, and a partner — LDIW — that already has an affiliate network active in 190+ countries to plug you into.
To bring your company's employees into the movement, connect with Let's Do It World at [worldcleanupday.org] or reach out directly to explore what a corporate partnership could look like for your organization and surely support the movement depending on donations.
In 2026, Applied Materials will continue its cleanup efforts across six markets in Asia. Follow Applied Materials, World Cleanup Day, and LDIW on social media to see how we are turning collective action into positive global impact.
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