A 32-year-old began picking up litter to help his mental health and now his whole family spends quality time together on the clean-ups, while helping their community.
Mike Scotland began experiencing depression in his late 20s. After struggling for some time, he found himself by the bank of the River Don in his hometown of Aberdeen, Scotland, surrounded by litter and ready to take his own life.
Thankfully, his mind was changed—but whenever Mike would pass the river, a known local dumping ground, the rubbish would remind him of that dark day. So he decided to take matters into his own hands.
“I was in a really dark place,” Mike told SWNS news. “I was saved by a phone call that stopped me there and then—but after that, whenever I’d walk past that area, I felt like a dark shadow was haunting me.
“One day, I took three black bags and went down to the riverside and just started picking up litter.
“There was a person on a bike that stopped me and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was litter picking and he asked if I wanted a hand.
“He parked his bike, and me and this guy ended up spending the next couple of hours picking up litter together and having the most open and honest chats about anything and everything.
Before Mike headed home, he told the stranger that he was going to start a litter-picking group.
True to his word, the next day Mike started the group Community Clean Up, and over the next few months they gathered weekly to beautify the land around the river. To date, they’ve collected almost 30,000 pounds of litter (13,500kg), and pulled a whopping 5,500 pounds of metal (2,500kg) from the river bottom.
“There were about four to six people that showed up (for the first one), but we ended up cleaning up over 300kg (660 pounds) of litter over a couple of hours.
The following weekend, ten people showed up and they doubled their haul. Soon, they actually saw otters swim upstream for the first time in 40 years.
“We transformed that whole area as a community—we gave it life again.”
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Mike is now a father of three and says the whole family now picks up litter regularly, especially his five-year-old son, Lucio, who picked up his first piece of trash as a toddler.
“I remember taking my son to the park when he was 18 months old, and he spotted an empty bottle. Even then, he went and picked it up and put it in the bin.”
“One of the things we used to do as father and son was go out dressed as Batman and ‘fight the litter’. It’s a great way to get him outside and teach him about the environment.
Last year, in the aftermath of Storm Babet, Mike recalls the “horrible” amount of litter that washed up.
“I’d never seen anything like it. My son couldn’t understand why people were just walking past it, and he really wanted to help clean it up. He asked if I could find people to help us, so I went on Facebook and did a live video showing everyone the mess that was down there, and I asked for help.”
“Within about 45 minutes, there were 25 people who’d come down to help.
It was such a mess, that the dynamic duo spent the next couple of weeks setting up an event and speaking to the local media, until around 350 people showed up to finish the job—removing over 400 bags of storm debris.
“It was really uplifting to see that there’s a lot of people out there that want to do good.”
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Mike and his partner Nikki now have a database of over 100 litter-loathing locals, which they loan out to groups keen to do their own clean-ups.
Mike says he couldn’t be prouder of his children for the work they’ve done, and says they give him hope for the future.
“For me as a parent, it’s really uplifting to see them excited to make a difference. It’s second nature to them now.”
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“Their mindset is focused on doing a good thing for the right reasons. They’re not doing it for attention or praise, they’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do.
“Over time, it should hopefully reduce the amount of people littering in the first place.
“It’s a long goal. I don’t know if I’ll achieve it in my lifetime, but I’ll certainly try my best.”
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A big congratulations to Mr. Scotland and his son in Scotland picking up litter and doing it because it’s the right thing to do. Huge respect to you!