On June 19th, we met with a group of around 20 OX2 volunteers to help clean up the area around the “Łosiowe Błota” Nature Reserve in Warsaw’s Bemowo district. Together, we collected 20 full bags of trash that had built up on the site over a long period of time. The group made its way along the paths running around the reserve and through the surrounding wetland, trying to reach less accessible spots as well, where trash tends to accumulate for years unnoticed by most visitors. Working in terrain like this requires more care than an ordinary park or forest, since the ground is boggy in places and the paths are narrow – even so, the whole team managed it smoothly and without major difficulty.
Why Łosiowe Błota deserves special care
The “Łosiowe Błota” reserve is one of the few well-preserved wetland areas within Warsaw’s city limits – a place with unique natural value that serves as a refuge for many plant and animal species tied to marshland environments. Wetlands like this one are among the fastest-disappearing ecosystems in Poland today, even though they play a key role in water retention, filtering out pollutants, and easing the effects of drought in surrounding areas. Bogs and peatlands also store enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, making them a significant part of the fight against climate change – often more so than a forest of similar size.
Areas like this are especially sensitive to pollution, since trash left among wetland vegetation can sit in the damp soil for years instead of breaking down naturally. Cleaning up the area around a reserve like this therefore matters far more than cleaning an ordinary green space – it protects an ecosystem that’s a rarity on the map of the capital, and one that, once damaged, takes decades to recover, if it recovers at all.
How long nature needs to deal with our trash
The waste we collected during this event could have stayed in the forest far longer than you might expect. A plastic PET bottle can take up to 1,000 years to break down in forest conditions, while other common items like plastic wrap or cigarette butts need anywhere from several to over a dozen years. An aluminum can, despite seeming flimsy, can sit in the environment for up to 200 years, and a glass bottle can take hundreds of thousands of years depending on conditions, since glass barely biodegrades at all. Even seemingly organic waste like chewing gum can take up to 5 years to break down.
During that time, this waste releases microplastics and chemical substances into the soil and water that affect the plants and animals living there. This timescale shows why a single cleanup can have an effect that lasts for decades – by removing waste today, we genuinely shorten how long it would otherwise harm the local ecosystem.
When a company’s business meets its care for nature
OX2 operates in the renewable energy sector, so caring for the natural environment fits directly into what the company already does every day. Events like this one, though, let that mission move from the level of business strategy to something very concrete and hands-on – instead of talking about environmental protection in a presentation, employees got to spend a day out in the field, seeing for themselves what caring for nature actually looks like in practice. It’s a good example of how corporate volunteering works best when it connects naturally to values a company already represents.
Thanks
Thank you to the OX2 team for your commitment and for taking action together for Łosiowe Błota. This is what corporate volunteering looks like in practice – not in a conference room, but in the forest, gloves and a bag in hand. The effects of this event will remain visible for a long time, and the area around the reserve gained several years back that nature alone would have needed far longer to provide.
