VIVAN Life Sciences Blog
On June 1 and 2, nearly 5,000 Mumbaikars came together to clean up almost 20 tonnes of trash from nine beachfronts, four rivers and different mangrove locations all the same time.
Although the Maximum City does have multiple volunteer groups engaged in cleaning domestic waste across these locations at their convenience, many of them have come together under the Jallosh-Clean Coasts initiative led by Project Mumbai, a non-profit.
This is the first-of-its-kind citywide initiative with participation from environment groups, citizen volunteers, state agencies, school and college students and corporations.
Volunteers at Beach Please have been doing clean up work at Dadar Beach and Mithi River for the past two years now. Using gloves, facemasks, buckets and hand tools, volunteers with Beach Please have focussed on cleaning the river shore which has a lot of plastic.
Nearly six months ago, there was such a thick layer of plastic that one even couldn’t see the sand below. There have been some improvements since, but not enough with the monsoon coming up.
Meanwhile, other beach clean up crusaders like Afroz Shah took his team of more than 350 volunteers to clean up trash across other beach fronts using different waste removal equipment.
Besides water bodies and beach fronts, there are challenges in cleaning the city’s famed mangrove forests in Malad and Gorai as well.
Waste segregation at source is a concept that many locals haven’t taken seriously or don’t understand.
If every resident did take it seriously in practice, nearly half the city’s waste problems would get resolved.
Reference: Better India
