Gerald
Tommy Kleyn cycles to work every day along a river bank in the Netherlands. He enjoys the journey, except for one part, which had become heavily polluted with plastic bottles and trash. Well, Tommy decided to do something about it. He resolved to get up half an hour early each day and fill up a garbage bag until all the trash was gone! After posting the images on facebook, he enlisted the help of some friends and they soon got to work cleaning up the river bank. Here is Tommy’s story and the results of their amazing work…
“Everyday, I ride my bicycle to work along the river bank. It’s a nice route to ride, except for one part.”
“A stretch of the river bank is covered in plastic bottles and other pieces of (mainly) plastic trash.”
“This is the littered part”:
“The trash annoyed me very much, so, I decided to start picking them up.”
“It took me about 30 minutes to fill one garbage bag with trash.”
“But, one bag doesn’t really make a dent in an area as polluted as this.”
“I vowed to fill one bag of trash each day I passed the spot.”
“The area between the arrows was clean at this point. This is the progress made in only 6 days”
“I shared my experiences on Facebook and now, over 180 people ‘like’ the project”
“A lot of people were all like ‘There should be more people like you!’”
“And there were: this is my friend Rick helping out”
The Contrast
“The location was next to a bike path, and quite a few people got off their bikes and said what a great initiative this was.”
“The trash tried to communicate with me”
“The last garbage bag”
“In 22 bags of trash, this is the only item I deemed worth keeping.”
“The idea is to motivate people to fill one garbage bag with litter each year.”
“It only takes 30 minutes, it really makes a difference and you will be amazed about how good you’ll feel afterwards.”
“An Eurasian Coot started nesting in the part which I cleaned.”
Well done Tommy and everyone else who helped out in this amazing project! (via Bored Panda)
