Following environmental news these days it is easy to get depressed and become pessimistic. While these feelings are justified, they aren't always helpful. For this reason, I like to spend time seeking out and writing about positive environmental stories that will hopefully bring hope and inspire action.
Today I came across an amazing article that that followed up on the story of a man who inspired the cleanup of a heavily polluted beach in India.
Here is the backstory: Afroz Shah, a lawyer who'd recently moved to Mumbai, noticed the beach near his home was buried in trash, and even though it looked like an impossibly large task, he started cleaning it up by himself. His work eventually inspired many others to join in and by contributing his weekends and a healthy chunk of his salary, over a period of two years the beach was eventually cleaned up! His story has inspired other people around the world to remove trash from their local beaches.
This story had another great development this spring, thanks to improving environmental conditions on the beach, a threatened species of turtle returned, laid eggs, and those eggs hatched!
Yes, after a multi-year cleanup effort, dozens of Olive Ridley hatchlings were spotted on the beach making their way to the ocean! What an incredible story of how one person made a difference. You never know who you will inspire with your actions, so pick a problem and act!
You can follow Afroz Shah on Twitter here.
The turtles pictured in this post are not Olive Ridley turtles since I like to use my own photos and I haven't been to India! The turtle at the top is a green sea turtle from Hawaii. The turtle at the bottom (fittingly eating trash) is a snapping turtle in North Carolina.