Man Battling Depression Starts Cleaning up Litter in His Hometown — Heals Himself and the Environment
Trigger Warning: The following story contains mention of mental health issues, which might be disturbing to readers.
Life on Earth is pretty similar to dealing with a chaotic mind. The space is almost always crammed with unwelcome trash, just like unwanted thoughts pollute an unstable mind. Every second, there is something new – a cigarette butt, a crisp packet, an old bottle, or a shard of plastic, contaminating the planet. Over time, these small things pile up into a bigger heap. So, when 33-year-old Mike Scotland (@mike-scotland) found his mind crumbling into the dark abyss of depression, he started healing himself by cleaning up his hometown, one trash bag at a time.
A resident of Aberdeen, today Mike is a motivational speaker who inspires people to face their demons and embrace the intricacies of their mental health, all the while tidying up the trails and streets of his Scottish town with his project called “Community CleanUP.” In every session organized under this project, he ventures on the coastlines, beaches, and diverse locations with his team members, all of them armed with litter pickers and bin bags. Instead of slumping on the chairs of a conference room, this community marches in pride, sprinkling positive energy and uplifting the spirits of those who are drenched in grief and gloom.
“Most of us walk through life without noticing the rubbish around us, our eyes trained to ignore what’s uncomfortable, what feels like ‘someone else’s problem.’ But the second you choose to notice, it’s everywhere,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post two months ago, sharing that he spent 10,320 seconds that day picking up litter that amounted to 2,244 items. “Here’s the truth: If you’re not picking it up, you’re accepting that it’s there. You're silently saying, ‘This is fine.’ But it’s not.”
Today, Mike, a dad of three, inspires many to pay attention to their mental health, but this wouldn’t have been possible unless a breakdown he calls a “realization” he experienced on a day in 2019. "I was in a really dark place. 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," Mike recounted to SWNS news. In a LinkedIn post, he shared, he has been suffering unknowingly from depression for the past 27 years. He had even felt as close to ending his life on the bank of a river.
But there was one day, particularly in May 2019, when he just collapsed. He was driving in a car, and all of a sudden, his heart began racing. His body went numb yet burning at the same time. He found the car shaking and something clawing around his head. There was only one thing he could fathom in that moment. His heart was screaming, “I need help!” According to the WHO, approximately 280 million people in the world suffer from the same feelings of depression every single moment.
For Mike, the river became a reminder of his relentlessly dwindling mental health. Each time he passed through the river, the heaps of trash reminded him of the jumble of thoughts rumbling in his own brain. One day, he made a decision, a decision to clean it up. “One day, I took three black bags and went down to the riverside and just started picking up litter,” he said. As the word got out, people joined him in this initiative. His initiative has spawned a remarkable mindset shift in the local community. And he is finally beginning to heal. “This isn’t just about picking up rubbish, this is about picking each other up. There’s no ‘I’ in team, but there is a ‘U’ in community,” he wrote on Facebook.
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