Can ordinary people really repair damaged places? These eleven projects suggest they can, at least locally. A lawyer in Mumbai rallied volunteers to clear a beach until sea turtles hatched there again. A Dutch student's idea grew into one of the best-known ocean clean-up efforts. An Indian state planted tens of millions of saplings in a single day, and a California family turned a city lot into a working farm.
Here is what each project did, what has happened since, and where the original claims needed correcting. The projects are grouped by theme: cleaning up, meeting basic needs, planting trees, building greener places and making greener products.
The eleven projects at a glance
- Versova Beach, Mumbai: volunteer clean-up led by Afroz Shah; olive ridley hatchlings returned in 2018.
- "Cleanman", Chelyabinsk: a masked volunteer filmed clearing rubbish from Russian woodland.
- The Ocean Cleanup: Boyan Slat's floating barriers in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
- Water Wells for Africa: clean water points in rural Malawi since 1996.
- The Shoe That Grows: an adjustable sandal that expands five sizes.
- Urban Homestead, Pasadena: a family growing food on a tenth of an acre since 1985.
- Tree-planting drones: BioCarbon Engineering's seed-pod drones.
- Uttar Pradesh, 2016: a claimed 49.3 million saplings planted in 24 hours.
- MUSE School, California: plant-based school meals and solar "sunflowers".
- Neapolis Smart EcoCity, Cyprus: a planned green district near Paphos.
- Fashion brands: water-saving denim, ocean-plastic trainers and shoe recycling.
Cleaning up beaches, forests and the ocean
Versova Beach: the turtles came back
Photos: Afroz Shah; Steve Jurvetson.
Afroz Shah, a lawyer who grew up near Versova Beach in Mumbai, returned in 2015 to find it buried under plastic washed in from the sea and nearby creeks. He started clearing it himself, at first paying costs out of his own pocket, and kept going week after week. Residents and students joined him, and the effort became one of the largest volunteer beach clean-ups in India; volumes running into millions of kilograms have been reported over the years.
In 2016 UN Environment named Shah a Champion of the Earth. In March 2018 nearly a hundred olive ridley hatchlings were seen making their way to the Arabian Sea from the cleaned beach, the first such sighting there in years. The olive ridley is listed as vulnerable by the IUCN, so a nesting beach matters. Volunteers kept watch as the hatchlings crossed the sand.
The lesson is not only that clean beaches attract wildlife. Shah's approach relied on showing up every weekend, which turned a one-off event into a habit for thousands of people.
"Cleanman" in the woods of Chelyabinsk
Image: still from the YouTube video about Cleanman.
A volunteer from Chelyabinsk in Russia, known online as Cleanman, became widely shared after a short video showed him filling bag after bag with rubbish dumped in forests and parks. He wears a green mask and sunglasses; according to the video, the disguise is meant to keep attention on the litter rather than on him. The claim that he can fill 28 bags in an hour circulated with the video but has not been independently checked.
The Ocean Cleanup in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Boyan Slat presented his idea for passive floating barriers as a teenager in 2012 and founded The Ocean Cleanup in the Netherlands in 2013. Its first full system, System 001, left San Francisco in September 2018. It did not go smoothly: the barrier struggled to hold on to the plastic it gathered, and in December 2018 an 18-metre section broke off. In two months it had caught about two tonnes of debris.
Later designs worked better. System 002, towed by two ships, launched in July 2021, and System 03, a barrier 2,250 metres long, followed in May 2023. The organisation reports having removed more than 60 million kilograms of rubbish from rivers and the patch, much of it from river interceptors.
One often-repeated figure needs correcting: the patch does not hold "over 100,000 tons" by any agreed measure. A 2018 study estimated about 79,000 tonnes and roughly 1.8 trillion pieces. Scientists have also questioned the cost and ecological side effects of removing plastic at sea, and estimate that less than 5% of ocean plastic ends up in the garbage patches. Stopping plastic before it reaches the sea remains the bigger task.
Water, shoes and food: help that reaches people directly
Water Wells for Africa
Photos: Water Wells for Africa.
Kurt Dahlin founded Water Wells for Africa after seeing how far women and girls in rural Malawi walked to carry water, and how often it was unsafe to drink. The group has been building water points since 1996 and became a US non-profit in 2008. A Malawian team scouts sites, coordinates drilling, trains villagers and returns for maintenance.
The organisation's numbers have grown well beyond the early figures that circulated online: it now reports more than 680 sustainable water sources used daily by over 560,000 people. Follow-up visits matter as much as drilling: a broken pump quickly sends a village back to the river.
The Shoe That Grows
Photos: The Shoe That Grows.
While volunteering in Kenya, Kenton Lee noticed children whose shoes were far too small, or who had none at all. Bare feet in poor areas risk cuts, infections and soil-transmitted parasites. His answer was a sandal with adjustable straps and snaps that expands five sizes, so one pair can last a child several years. Donors can buy pairs through The Shoe That Grows for distribution by partner organisations.
Urban Homestead: a farm on a city lot
Photos: Urban Homestead.
Since 1985 the Dervaes family has grown food on about a tenth of an acre at their home in Pasadena, California. The family has reported harvesting several tonnes of produce a year from hundreds of plant varieties, using raised beds and containers, and keeping chickens, ducks, goats and bees. They have sold produce to local restaurants and donated more than 10,000 pounds of food.
The founder, Jules Dervaes Jr. (1947–2016), described growing your own food as a radical act. The project shows how much a small, intensively worked plot can produce, though few households could match the hours involved.
Planting trees at scale
Drones that fire seed pods
Image: still from a YouTube video on drone planting.
The British start-up BioCarbon Engineering, later part of Dendra Systems, uses satellite and drone mapping to choose planting sites. Planting drones then shoot pods containing a germinated seed and nutrients into the soil, up to 120 a minute, according to the World Economic Forum. The company's stated ambition is 500 billion trees by 2060 (not 2050, as earlier reports said).
Drones are fast, especially on steep or burned ground, but a pod in the soil is not yet a tree. Survival depends on rain, species choice and protection from grazing, so results should be judged years later.
Uttar Pradesh: 49.3 million saplings in a day
Photos: Rajesh Kumar Singh / National Geographic; National Geographic España; © Thrive With Diabetes.
On 11 July 2016 more than 800,000 volunteers in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh planted saplings of 80 species, raised in 950 nurseries, along roads, railways and public land. The state claimed 49.3 million trees in 24 hours, far above the previous record of 847,275 mangroves planted in Pakistan; Guinness verification was pending at the time. India had also agreed to invest about $6.2 billion in reforesting 12% of its land by 2030.
Mass planting days make headlines, but the real measure is how many saplings survive. Officials promised aerial monitoring, and that kind of follow-up is what separates restoration from a photo opportunity.
Greener schools and cities
MUSE School's kitchen and solar sunflowers
Photos: MUSE School.
MUSE School in California's Malibu Canyon was founded in 2006 by Suzy Amis Cameron and her sister Rebecca Amis. Its lunches went plant-based one day a week in 2013 and fully plant-based in 2015, and pupils help grow food in the school garden. In May 2015 the school installed five solar towers shaped like sunflowers, which supply most of its electricity. Older reports called the cafeteria the "greenest restaurant in the world"; that title could not be confirmed, but the school is a well-documented example of a low-impact kitchen.
Neapolis Smart EcoCity, Cyprus
Images: Neapolis.
Near Paphos in Cyprus, the Leptos Group has long planned Neapolis, a mixed-use "smart" district of about 888,000 square metres with roughly 4,000 homes, a university, a hospital, schools, shops, offices and green space. The earlier claim that residents would move in around 2023 did not come true: a March 2025 investment report still described it as a greenfield project, with financing secured for initial infrastructure. Plans like this are worth watching, but they are promises until they are built.
Can fashion brands make clothes greener?
Photos: Levi Strauss & Co.; adidas.
Clothing is a thirsty, wasteful industry, and several big brands have made visible changes. Levi's introduced its Water<Less finishing methods in 2011 to cut the water used to give jeans a worn look. Adidas teamed up with Parley for the Oceans on trainers made partly from recycled plastic collected near coastlines. Nike's Reuse-A-Shoe scheme, running since the early 1990s, grinds old trainers into material for sports surfaces.
Some viral claims about the industry, such as H&M swapping "natural fur" for organic cotton or most companies using bags that biodegrade within two years, do not hold up. A useful rule: look for specific, measurable claims, and be wary of vague "eco" labels, a practice known as greenwashing.
What these stories have in common
Three patterns stand out. First, the most lasting projects keep going after the cameras leave: Shah's weekly clean-ups, Water Wells for Africa's repair visits, the Dervaes family's decades of gardening. Second, big numbers need checking. Tree counts, tonnes removed and promised opening dates were often rounded up or later revised. Third, prevention beats cure. Clean-ups and new trees help, but less waste and less deforestation help more.
If you want to act, start local: join a beach or park clean-up, support groups that publish their results, and change one habit, such as refusing single-use plastic. Small, steady actions are what most of these stories were built on.
Preview photo: Afroz Shah. Original list: Bright Side.
Sources: UN Environment: Versova Beach clean-up, May 2018; Wikipedia: Afroz Shah; Wikipedia: The Ocean Cleanup; Water Wells for Africa: Who we are; The Shoe That Grows; Urban Homestead (Dervaes family); World Economic Forum: drones aiming to plant 500 billion trees by 2060; GearJunkie: India plants 50 million trees in one day, July 2016; Wikipedia: MUSE School; Real Asset Insight: Neapolis Smart EcoCity, Paphos (March 2025); Bright Side (original list).
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