Imagine a nice and tidy place by the side of the road you everyday go by. Now imagine a patch of this beautiful surrounding that is full of waste!
Just think how you would feel.
Tommy Kleyn had the same feeling when he had to pass by a riverside that was covered with various plastic waste materials.
He was annoyed at seeing things that way. But as no one else seemed to be taking care of them, he started to clear the area himself!
30 minutes of labour and that place lost a bag of trash.
“But, one bag doesn't really make a dent in an area as polluted as this,” he thought to himself.
So he vowed to fill one bag of trash every one of his work days.
Within only 6 days he performed a miracle and cleaned a pretty big part of the riverbank!
So, next, he uploaded pictures of the area initially covered in wastes and his pictures of cleaning it, to inspire others.
And others were inspired. A number of people came to help him clean the area. One of them was a friend of his named Rick.
And in exactly 22 days, the whole area was transformed!
We litter our surroundings every day, without even thinking. After drinking anything, we just throw away the bottle or the can; after eating being done, we drop the packets and wrappers and just forget about them. Only if we picked them up instead of throwing away, our beautiful world would never be dirty again. If we just stopped littering, we could make our surroundings reclaim the beauty they are supposed to have.
Mr. Kleyn has said the same thing. He started a Facebook page called Project Schone Schie ("schone" means "clean" in Dutch). “The idea is to motivate people to fill one garbage bag with litter each year,” he wrote.
Think about it yourself. If one single person can make a whole riverbank clean in only 22 days, what can hundreds do?!
Stop littering and start cleaning around you. Start small. 5 minutes a day is enough to begin with. Keep working and who knows? Maybe the next month or so you will see that your neighbourhood looking a lot better, and all because of you!