Those hands that join forces: hitting the streets together to repair the city

On the island of Bornholm, in Denmark, the horizon is dotted with windmills and white houses, but the real revolution isn’t visible to the naked eye. It lies in the waste cycle. Here, by 2032, the goal is radical: to become a zero-waste society, where every material we call “waste” is instead treated as a resource to be reintroduced into a new life cycle. Not an abstract promise, but an operational plan that National Geographic described in detail a few years ago: widespread collection, advanced technologies, civic education, economic incentives. This is the island that rebels against the very idea of a landfill and attempts to write an alternative grammar. Bornholm opens our story because it marks the trajectory of a world that can no longer afford waste. International institutions know this well: the Circle Economy Foundation, highlighted by The Economist, reminds us that global circularity has declined from 9.1% to 7.2% in six years. In short, almost everything we extract does not return into the cycle. Cold numbers. 

But alongside these cold statistics are warm stories like Bornholm’s, showing what a different future could look like: recycling and upcycling not as aesthetic whims but as conditions for survival and innovation. It’s worth clarifying the difference: recycling recovers material and gives it new life, while upcycling elevates waste to a higher level, transforming it into an object of value, a community space, a shared symbol. William McDonough and Michael Braungart wrote about this in their foundational texts, speaking of “cradle to cradle”: matter has no end, only a succession of destinies. Elinor Ostrom taught us that common goods endure only when managed collectively. And it’s no coincidence that Tim Brown, father of design thinking, speaks of constraints as drivers of creativity. Together, these ideas form the theoretical framework of recycling and upcycling: not just environment, but culture. And at a certain point, these theories leave the books and take to the streets. Literally. That’s where corporate volunteering comes in.

Corporate volunteering
From theory to practice, we could say. Because today corporate volunteering is no longer just fundraising or mentoring: it’s also rubber gloves, brooms, paintbrushes, hammers. It’s the environmental dimension - upcycling and recycling included - taking shape and drawing more and more people. The Associated Press has reported on the trend: after the pandemic, companies are offering more flexible and hands-on programs, and employees are responding en masse. The Academy of Management Journal confirms that volunteering strengthens the bond with the organization, stimulates motivation, and improves performance. Deloitte estimates that more than 9 out of 10 workers consider volunteering opportunities decisive for their work experience and pride of belonging.
Let’s return to the images, which speak louder than words. The scene looks like this: dusty shoes, rubber gloves, filling garbage bags, children asking questions, grandparents passing by and saying “well done.” It’s the moment when business steps off the stage and onto the sidewalk. There’s no keynote, no perfect slide: there’s a collective gesture that transforms waste into material, scraps into stories, parks into places. This is where corporate volunteering stops being a LinkedIn post and becomes civic infrastructure. This is where upcycling and recycling are no longer buzzwords but shared practice. You can see it clearly during the Sella Volunteer Day: hundreds of people, Sella Group colleagues and their families in nine Italian cities, coordinated by Legambiente for the fourth year in a row. Goal: to clean and restore parks, gardens, squares, and beaches. A shared grammar that passes from hand to hand: what to separate, what to reuse, what to donate to recycling chains.
It’s not a one-off gesture: it’s a skill that remains within the community and within the company, because after t-shirts and photos, what remain are relationships, contacts with associations, and a map of needs to return to. Everything is documented: cities, numbers, method. And one simple truth: active citizenship is contagious when lived together.
Beyond Italy, the same scene repeats itself in different accents. World Cleanup Day mobilizes millions of people and thousands of companies every year: entire departments leave the open space to clear rivers and beaches, often in partnership with schools and municipalities. Its value is not only in the filled bags, but also in the “before” (training, kits, mapping) and the “after” (channels for recycling, reports to municipalities, replicable micro-maintenance). It’s a global machine that has even found a place on the official United Nations agenda: not a one-off happening, but a measurable civic routine.
Newspapers report on the growing demand for meaning coming from offices: in the post-pandemic era, corporate volunteering programs have multiplied, with platforms recording more participation, more hours, and a shared mantra: flexibility, real impact, activities that connect with people’s professions. From Microsoft to Blue Cross Blue Shield, teams want hands-on projects and the chance to use professional skills in the field as well. The result? Higher engagement, lower turnover. Work psychologist Jessica Rodell puts it this way: volunteering strengthens organizational identification and the desire to stay.
According to CECP – Giving in Numbers 2024, 23% of employees participate in volunteering programs, with a 75% increase in hours between 2021 and 2023 and a median of 45,600 hours donated per company; the financial sector leads participation with 29%. But the key figure is another: programs work when they are flexible. Proof that the how matters as much as the how much. Thus, volunteering opportunities improve work experience and the bond with the company; about half say they feel proud of their workplace. Translated: environmental volunteering is not window-dressing, it’s a cultural driver.
And there’s also the educational dimension: The Times reported how this type of volunteering develops transferable skills, leadership, problem solving, time management, and even translates into pay and productivity benefits, as British studies on the economic value of professional give-back have shown. It’s not rhetoric: it’s human capital trained on real-world problems - coordinating a group of volunteers, mapping waste, engaging with the neighborhood - and then brought back into the company with new tools. Civic coordination makes the difference: without supply chains and partners, the “day” remains suspended; with them, it becomes a prototype of circular economy.

Feeding networks
Here the academic framework comes back into play. Rodell has shown how volunteering enhances identification with the organization and prosocial motivation, with effects on performance and retention. American thinker and leading organizational theorist Adam Grant reminds us that “giving” fuels networks and skills that return (the so-called giver advantage), and that in public policy short networks matter: those activated by volunteering and that, if well orchestrated, transform punctual interventions into community maintenance. Skills-based volunteering develops intercultural capacities and problem-solving abilities transferable to everyday work. It’s the pedagogy of doing: you learn because you put your hands in.

A lesson in placemaking
And what about examples of “living” upcycling? There are hubs companies engage with as partners and volunteers: BeeOzanam in Turin, a former factory now a community hub with reuse workshops and courses where corporate teams return to the workshop for a day, but also to support ongoing programs. Moltivolti in Palermo, a social space hosting coworking, a restaurant, and civic projects, with opportunities for both hands-on and professional volunteering.
In the Anglo-Saxon world, cooperatives such as The Remakery in London turn surplus materials into training opportunities: here corporate volunteers don’t just bring muscle, they bring skills - designers, makers, communicators - to empower micro-enterprises and citizens. The circle closes when recovered wood becomes furniture for a neighborhood library, when “noble” plastic is reborn as a toy or furnishing, when teams maintain the connection and return, quarter after quarter.
One important note: the best programs don’t stop at manual action. They map collected waste, feed municipal databases, open second-life channels (craft or industrial upcycling), connect with schools and universities, measure outputs and outcomes. Benchmarks show that companies investing in coordination-in governance, local partners, community managers, disposal and reuse supply chains - build lasting value. More planning, more participation.
Ultimately, environmental corporate volunteering is an urban kintsugi made of reflective vests and paint: it doesn’t hide the crack, it highlights it. This time the gold isn’t precious powder: it’s people’s time, shared skills, the supply chain that reconnects to purpose. It’s the moment when a company, whether a market leader or aspiring to be one, realizes that reputation is a common good: it is built on the ground, together, one bag at a time, one reused panel at a time, one bench at a time.
Let’s return to the Sella Volunteer Day. Now in its fourth edition, it saw hundreds of employees and families engaged across nine Italian cities, coordinated by Legambiente, to restore dignity to community spaces. Not just cleaning, but reuse: collected plastics channeled into new supply chains, wood regenerated into urban furniture, schoolyards made available to children once again. It’s a great lesson in placemaking: when space becomes place again thanks to collective action. Above all, it’s a workshop of active citizenship that translates into social capital.
From Italy to the rest of the world, from Sella to international success stories. There’s General Electric’s Global Month of Service, mobilizing employees for environmental projects worldwide. There’s World Cleanup Day, which, as mentioned, brings millions of corporate volunteers and ordinary citizens together to clear beaches and rivers, with a measurable method starting with training and ending with recycling chains. There are cooperatives such as The Remakery in London, welcoming corporate teams for upcycling projects: social carpentries where tables are built from scraps and employees learn, in the space of an afternoon, that sawdust is an excellent teacher of teamwork. Jessica Rodell, University of Georgia, wrote it clearly in her article Corporate Volunteering and Employee Engagement: “Corporate volunteering is not peripheral. It is a fundamental way through which employees connect their personal values to their professional lives.”

Illuminating the fractures
You may have already read it between the lines above. There’s a Japanese art called kintsugi: it repairs broken ceramics with liquid gold. It doesn’t hide the fractures, it illuminates them. It’s both aesthetic and philosophical: beauty is not the absence of cracks, but their display, enriched by care. Upcycling and recycling do the same with materials and cities: they don’t erase history, they tell it.
Corporate volunteering, through days like the Sella Volunteer Day or global mobilizations, translates this philosophy into practice. The fractures of our communities - abandoned spaces, neglected parks, peeling walls - are not hidden, but filled with gold. Gold made of hands, time, relationships, passions.
In the end, this is what remains: when a company takes to the streets, it not only does good for the neighborhood, it does good for itself. It discovers that sustainability is not a line item in a budget, but a daily grammar. And that reputation cannot be bought, only built. Or that innovation is not only in labs, but also in courtyards restored together. And that, as in every kintsugi, true value does not lie in the intact object, but in the scar that comes back to life. That shines, immense.