The annual Olympic Day Run organized by McDonalds was held on the 8^th March 2013 with great pomp and ceremony in the beautiful city of Sharjah on the Al Qasba Cornice. Every year I eagerly wait for this run to come as I am always really enthusiastic to participate. This year too I took part in this run and completed this 3 KM run successfully. Right from the start till the end, I ran as fast as I could. The atmosphere was just right as the run was held at the seaside and we got to enjoy the fresh air while running. This Fun Run was complete with caps and T-shirts being provided to all  It was a really enjoyable experience.

Many sponsors supported this event with great enthusiasm. Among them were McDonalds, UAE Athletics Federation, Al Qasba, etc. One of the amazing sponsors was Coca Cola which provided cool and refreshing drinks to us after a long and tiring run. Volunteers were opening the cans for us and giving them to us so that we don?t even have to make the effort of opening them ourselves! We drank them up quickly and quenched our thirst. The chilled cold drinks made us feel extremely refreshed.

But amongst the enjoyment and celebration, I noticed that a horrendous thing was happening. After drinking the Coca Cola cans and quenching their thirst, people were just throwing their cans here and there making the place a dump. I was really disheartened on seeing that what a mess people create of our mother earth. It is really sad how man just litters the environment. I wondered that can even people make the effort of just throwing their respective cans into the bin? If they did so, it would certainly make a huge difference to our mother earth.

But I realized that it was not the time to sit and ponder. Some action had to be taken. If it goes on like this, the beautiful and scenic area would look like a garbage dump by the end of the day! So along with my brother Raunak, and my friend Arushi, we collected all the cans lying on the grass, footpath and road one by one and collected them in some of the cartons in which the cans came as a whole. We worked consistently and were finally able to clean the whole area. In this way, we were able to clean the area &  give the aluminum cans and plastic bottles for recycling to a recycling center at the same time.