“There are 18,000 pieces of plastic floating around in each square km of ocean.”

I pick up other people’s sh*t.

Just the other day, I was on the beach waiting for my yoga students. I saw a plastic bag travelling from afar towards me, bouncing lightly up and down on the sand, whirling in the wind. When it reached the row of sun beds and umbrellas, I observed closely, curious about what was going to happen next. The bag wooshed by lady number one, who could perhaps have grabbed it if she had troubled herself to extend her right arm. But she didn’t.

So the bag continued its journey and the wind blew it against the bean bag of another beached whale, who gave a little kick with his left foot and sent the plastic bag onwards. The bag then managed to avoid several other zombie humans who didn’t even acknowledge its presence. Finally, it landed against the knees of lady number two, who actually moved her upper body to bend forwards a little so she could grab the bag.

“Ah, good,” I thought, “That’s taken care of.”

Ha, silly me. With a bored and disdainful flick of the hand, she threw the bag behind her. Her husband, sitting next to her, made sure the plastic bag would not hang around any longer than necessary and gave it and extra push to move along because by then, the wind was out of breath.

Being a true Pitta, the chain of events I had witnessed was enough to send Rajas boiling in my core, heart and throat. With firm steps, I walked past the last couple, grabbed the plastic bag off the sand, loudly crumpled it into a small ball, strutted back past the pair again and gazed back over my shoulder with a look that I wish could have killed. I was completely ignored. Another 20 steps and I reached the beach bar, where I asked them to put the bag in the rubbish. Ten deep breaths later, my yoga students arrived and I forgot about the incident.

Until I saw this video passing by on the internet.

This super cool flash mob was organised in a shopping mall in Canada by a television program from Quebec.

It shows that thankfully, I’m not the only one who is concerned about plastic flying and floating around. Unfortunately, just like I noticed on the beach in Egypt, it also demonstrates that still not enough people care.

Educating our children and everybody else around us, displaying proper behaviour ourselves and yes, cleaning up other people’s sh*t will be necessary unless we want to (or until we all) drown in our own rubbish.

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Editor: Travis May

Photo: Video Still