Dutch Man Cleans Up Entire Riverbank on his Way to Work

Tired of having the beautiful river view along his route to work spoiled by mounting trash on the bank, a Dutch man decided to start picking up litter during his daily commute.

“It took me about 30 minutes to fill one garbage bag with trash, but one bag doesn’t make a dent in a place as polluted as this,” Tommy Kleyn said of the stretch of river in Rotterdam, Netherlands. “I vowed to fill one bag of trash each day as I passed this spot.”

Klein photographed his progress, mapped it on a Facebook Page. He was able to clear a short stretch of the river bank by himself in six days and, soon, people on the nearby bike path were joining him and his friends to collect a total of 22 bags of litter.

“The idea is to motivate people to fill one garbage bag with litter each year,” he posted to Imgur. “It only takes 30 minutes, it really makes a difference and you will be amazed about how good you feel afterwards.”

After reading his posts about cleaning up the river bank, people in Skagen, Denmark, picked up more than a ton of plastic waste from their beach. And back along the riverbank, Kleyn got an unexpected reward — a Eurasian Coot started nesting in the stretch of the river he cleaned.\