‘I found a purpose in Cyprus’
“If you ever feel that you want to do something meaningful, start small; pick up one piece of trash or join a cleanup to share a message that actually matters,” says 31 year old Niklas Wilhelm. Initially from south Germany, Niklas said his discontent with his home country was the impetus to seek a life elsewhere. His social media accounts sum this up in a single sentence: “I left everything behind to start over and found a purpose in Cyprus.”
As a child, he adds, migrating was always the target. Now, known as The Island Keeper on social media, his approach to life on the island is gaining traction.
“I wasn’t happy in Germany anymore in terms of a lot of things, it’s not a place where I want to raise my future kids anymore,” he says.
A brief encounter with Malta in 2024 led him getting to know about Cyprus. “I was living in Malta for three months, I like these island vibes, when a friend of mine moved to Larnaca. He told me that he had never experienced kindness from people as he had in Cyprus. Malta was like that but very small, it’s 12 times smaller than Cyprus… I visited Cyprus soon after and took the decision to move here. I agree with what he says, everywhere I go, people are super kind here”.
As a digital nomad behind a small marketing agency, Niklas can work from anywhere. Bearing in mind the tax incentive as a freelancer on the island and the fact that English is widely spoken, Niklas moved to Limassol.
“I wasn’t looking for a purpose, I never thought that after four months of being here I would be picking up trash and adopting a cat!”
Some four months ago, Niklas started cleaning up one of his favourite hangouts on the island, the power beach, as he calls it, in Limassol, where he exercises on an almost daily basis. “I posted my first video about the cleanup, where I talked about why I was doing it and people, strangers, reached out and wanted to help. I organised a second cleanup and five people from five different countries, Syria, Sweden, Cyprus, Germany and Russia came and the feeling was absolutely amazing; to know that you can bring people together for a good reason, through social media. I didn’t want to be an influencer or something, but it happened out of the reason that I felt that social media has a specific power to bring people together in real life,” he adds.
The need to “pick up trash”, as he says on numerous occasions, was to deal with his disappointment and sadness about the littering calamity on the island. “This beautiful island is so polluted… I have visited a lot of hidden places here, like rivers and dams and I noticed that all these beautiful spots are very polluted. So I started. And then the magic happened because once I had cleaned the power beach of mostly cigarette butts or small things, it felt pretty satisfying to see that I did something for a place where I love to train, where I love to be. I got a nice feeling without having any materialistic revenue. This is when I started release there was a lot of trash in other nature points too”.
Initially, he chose places to clean up which had sentimental value to him, but then extended this to places where cleaning services perhaps don’t go or just can’t reach. “I now choose places where I know the trash will end up in the sea if someone doesn’t take it away, I’m getting to know places that are very polluted where, most probably, people will never pick it up. We also go to the dams a lot, places where there are fisherman, which are also a big problem. Almost every second day I get new information about a place where we can go for a clean up.”
Now with over 90 volunteers between the ages of 19 and 50 in his group, clean ups have taken place across the island. “We already did three cleanups in Paphos, we were in Limassol four to five times, we went to Larnaca a few times, we were also in Ayia Napa and more recently, two or three times in Nicosia.” Niklas estimates that he and his team have collected over four tonnes of waste to date.
“When we do cleanups, there’s more than 20 big 100kg trash bags, and sometimes we find crazy things like a toilet or garden furniture and we can’t remove it, so we call the community service to pick it up, and they do.”
As a newcomer to the island, Niklas admits that he’s not too familiar with what happens to trash once it’s collected nor the recycling process. “The first step is picking it up, the second part is the disposal and the recycling part and this is something I want to face,” he says. “I’m in conversation with a company in Greece where you can wash the trash, mostly bottles and caps, recycle it and make items out of it. I know that Cyprus doesn’t have a company that does this. I would love to extend my work towards this, and relate it to recycled things,” he adds.
But for now, his weekly cleanups aim to change things from the onset. “I want to teach other members of the younger generation to take responsibility for the environment, but for me alone it’s quite difficult and that’s why I support local NGOs. We did a big cleanup with the Cyprus Sustainable Tourism Initiative, who are working on school programmes. I generally support all kinds of NGOs who have the manpower to teach or change something from the onset, especially in education.”
And so, as an individual Niklas has made a decision to use social media as his tool to change mindsets and raise awareness. “My only power is to make videos, and to engage people through social media, the more popular the videos get, the more people are aware and the more awareness I can spread. I get feedback from people that what I started is cool,” although that has also attracted its fair share of negative comments.
How so? “I’m doing this topless to spread the message, my motto is make picking up litter cool, and that’s why I do it the way I do. You’re not going to go online or on YouTube or Instagram or Google to try to find a video of a littler guy or something like that, so you need to combine it with cool things. Summer is hot so I’m topless anyway!”
“At the end of the day you can teach environmental awareness but if you combine it with a person or a mission behind it, people become fans of the mission and then try to change their behaviour also. I really want to change something and I feel like social media is a good vehicle to get a bit of power and to spread awareness, and I know that most NGOs don’t have social media managers, or a guy half naked in front of the camera and that’s why I want to support them in any way I can.”
Niklas also posits that the government needs to assist more. “Littering on the highway is prohibited but people do it anyway, perhaps there should some (more) signs, some bins at viewing points, this is really a problem, most viewing points have no bins,” says Niklas.
Perhaps because he is a foreigner he has a different view of the problem, can see it from the outside. He struggles to understand why out of the 90 volunteers in his group, there is a maximum of 20 Cypriots.
“Cypriots in the groups have told me that Cypriots are very proud of themselves and they don’t want to get in touch with a foreigner about this topic, so it would be better to have a Cypriot who approached them, and for me there is a solution to this: ask one of my best buddies here, Christos, and make him as an admin!” Yet Niklas remains stern in his ways. “I’m doing these cleanups because I want to do them. When people see it and get inspired, that’s perfect, if everybody picked up one piece of trash every day, it would really make a difference. I look outside the window of my apartment, I look at the road sides and they’re littered. Anyone who goes to a cleanup will not litter. Cleanups have a lot of advantages: you do good for nature, you’re connecting with great people, you bring people together who become really good friends,” concludes Niklas, and to top it off, you get to exercise, and perhaps go topless. But that’s not really the point of the initiative. “I started alone, and now I’m accompanied by almost 20 people every time.”