Will that work?

Today we were out and about in Copenhagen with #greenkayak: kayaking and picking up litter – the kayak hire is free for this. Such a typically Danish idea. Just do it.

“Just do it” isn’t always a good thing

“Just do it” is usually just a cliché that gives me a queasy feeling. Because it usually comes from people who want to “just do business” or “just make money”. But here it’s different: a sustainable idea, obvious, relatively easy to implement – and if it doesn’t work out, easy to stop too.

Greenkayak

My child and I, at any rate, paddled through the water on #greenkayak and got wet twice. Wet from above, thanks to some pretty heavy showers. The headwind was no joke either. It was great fun, and our haul of rubbish was decent too. Only a beach ball we’d laboriously picked up – with a girl’s name written on it – was then blown away by the wind when we took our eyes off it for a moment. Lesson learnt: next time, let the air out.

It won’t make any difference!

I can well imagine what many others might say about this: Nice idea, but naive. It won’t make any difference – that bit of rubbish that gets picked up. So much effort for so little! And besides: It’s market interference in the kayak hire market! And so on and so forth.

It does make a difference!

How wonderful that this brilliant idea has managed to take root from Denmark all the way to Germany. Not only is paddling fun, but raising awareness of rubbish in the water has already prompted quite a rethink here. So: some German cities already have #greenkayak. Give it a go! In this case, it really is: just do it.