I smiled when I handed over the 4Ocean bracelet to the man at Fomm Ir-Rih. “This is for you, for doing something that very few people would have done,” I said. He looked at me, still not understanding the greatness of his previous action. “Oh, you mean that? It was nothing special,” he claimed.

Little did he know how special it actually was. The thing is, when a human being does something that triggers another one to take a certain action, a chain reaction starts which most of the time is impossible to stop. The power of small actions is highly underestimated.

I am confident to claim that the biggest threats to our environment, in Malta and around the world, are the humans who don't realise their power, nor their impact. For this reason I challenge all leaders to put empowerment of the people as a top priority. You would be surprised to see how various issues in society will solve themselves by positive peer pressure and people understanding their power.

When planning my event Earth Day Clean Up, which happens 22nd of April, I became aware of the severity of this issue in Malta. People approached me and said, “I would love to join, but it might not make any difference”. They actually saw themselves as insignificant. On top of it, they had a hard time seeing the long-term effects their actions would have. This is the sad reality and I'm not sure how we ended up like this, but this has to stop, today.

Today you should start considering yourself as a part of the society. Big or small doesn't matter; you still have a part to play. We all have, and equally important.

Today you should start telling yourself that you are not just a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop. The power of the people are within us all and when we unite, change follows. The snowball effect is very powerful, but invisible at times.

I have been doing cleanups for many years now and some people think that the main result is that trash is being moved from one place to another. They consider success as measured in how many volunteers showed up and how much waste was collected.

But the real success is what cannot be measured - the amount of people passing by that were affected by the cleanup without saying anything to the volunteers and later on discussed with their friends and family. The indirect effects of a cleanup that show days, months, years or decades later, cannot be measured. This does not mean that it's insignificant - it instead means that the effect is long-term and far more complex than the one you can measure.

Getting people to go that extra step for a clean environment is all about psychology. If the leaders aren't doing what they demand the people to do, the people will not feel a need to change. On the other hand, the leaders might not do it since the people aren't showing interest enough. This is a well known situation and it often leads to people pointing fingers at each other and spending way too much time simply going nowhere.

If we instead used that energy to take action, the world would be very different. How come so many people think that it's OK to litter and defend their action with the fact that there is a person paid to clean after them? How come we as citizens do not stand up against that mindset? It all comes down to one thing and it's easily fixed. It's all about one word.

The man I gave the bracelet to thought he did nothing special. What he did, which might have been your question throughout this column, was simply picking up a plastic cup that the wind had blown out of his hand. It landed too far out at sea for him to reach it, but at one point it reached the shore on the other side of the bay, near where I sat. He walked all the way to collect that one cup he dropped. For him it might have been nothing. For me it meant everything. The spark of hope he gave me will indirectly affect people around me. We don't have to be able to see everything measured in numbers to understand its greatness!

Sometimes it takes a cup floating on the surface, chased by a person with a will to save the ocean from plastic to make you think.

Why did his action catch my attention? Because he didn't only know ‘what’ he was doing, he knew ‘why’ he was doing it. And that, dear reader, is powerful in itself.