I buried my feet in the warm, silky sand as I watched distant boats crossing the turquoise-blue ocean. It was 7 AM on a Friday and the beach was deserted. My friends and I, however, did not come here to spend a typical relaxing day at the seaside.

I grabbed a garbage plastic bag and started picking trash. My group of five friends did the same. We picked up and bagged all the junk that has been randomly littered on the beach. After four hours, our bags were overflowing with plastic bottles, fast-food packaging, forgotten toys and cigarettes. In my childhood, the ocean water was crystal clear and the sand was pristine. I would come across a variety of multi-coloured shells, crabs and the water was teeming with fish, big and small. It broke my heart to see that this former oasis, turning into a junkyard.

Jane was a social media influencer, she filmed every step of our cleaning operation. We aimed to raise awareness about sea pollution. Ironically, we had the time to do this partly because most of us were unemployed. To fill our spare time, we decided to do something worthwhile for the planet and our community, instead of watching Netflix or playing video games.

By noon, working in the blazing sun was becoming almost unbearable. Thankfully, our work was finished and we gathered all our bags at the same location. This would make it easy for the garbage collectors to pick them up the next day.

We could not resist the temptation of going for a swim. We had brought our swimming suits. We plunged one by one in the lukewarm water. I seized this opportunity to practice all the moves that I had learnt in past swimming lessons. My friends were quite impressed by my swimming skills and their jaws dropped when I demonstrated the hardest move, called the 'butterfly stroke'. The butterfly is a swimming stroke swum on the chest, with both arms moving symmetrically, accompanied by the butterfly kick.

By 4 PM, we were back on dry land, getting ready to go home. At this time, the beach was bustling with life, compared to the early morning. Rowdy kids were running around and about. Their parents, who were seemingly exhausted after a week of work, lay down on their mats, tanning the sunlight. Few seemed to notice that the beach was cleaner than usual. When we were about to leave, I spotted a middle-aged woman in workout clothes, panting on the beach. Her face was dribbling with sweat. She had apparently been jogging for a long time. She got out her bottle of water and drank furiously. After she was finished, she carelessly threw the plastic container on the sand, and carried on jogging.