Navi Mumbai youths make shelter for street dogs using waste plastic

A group of youngsters from Navi Mumbai used their free time for environment and made a shelter home for street dogs, by using innovative ideas such as using plastic to make bottle bricks

A group of youngsters from Navi Mumbai used their free time for environment and made a shelter home for street dogs, by using innovative ideas such as using plastic to make bottle bricks. Once the first one was made, they started collecting more plastic waste and installed several similar structures, especially in view of the monsoon.

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Vasundhara Gupte, 18, and her friend Khushi Shah, an environment lover, created a group called Urvari to conduct social environment-related activities. They started in 2019 by planting 10 trees every weekend, but their work stopped due to the lockdown.

Brainstorming over how to continue their work even amid the restrictions, this group came up with the idea of making shelter homes for street dogs in the vicinity in July last year. After trying out a few experiments, the group posted on social media, urging people not to waste plastic bottles and instead send it to them.

Gupte said, “We have taken up small eco brick projects last July to make a shelter home for street animals in heavy monsoon. Accordingly, we posted on our social media urging people to give their plastic waste to us. We were making plastic bottles by stuffing 300 grams of plastic waste wrappers and other things in each bottle. We mostly approached college students via social networking sites to prepare eco bricks at home and drop in at any of our drop stations across the city. More than 100 such bricks have been received from donors. We need around 150 such bottle bricks to build a shelter. Once it was ready, we kept t at Rajiv Gandhi Udyan, Sector 29, Vashi with the permission of the corporator of the area. Now, we are conducting this project on a much larger scale and are going to build a few more shelters in the next few weeks.”

Shah said, “Every day tonnes of plastic goes to waste without being recycled, and street animals eat this plastic or the waste related to it when they get hungry. So, we urge all residents to donate their plastic to us and we will use the same for a good cause. Earlier, we made dustbins and several other usable things in daily life using waste plastic. This shelter home is our gift to these animals who do not get shelter during heavy rains.”

Shashikant Raut, corporator of Vashi sector 29, praised the youth and made available four-five areas near gardens under his jurisdiction to install the shelter homes. Raut said, “I am really amazed after watching the efforts these children have taken to build this innovative shelter home. I have five parks in my area with Rajiv Gandhi Udyan being the biggest one. More than seven street dogs stay in that garden and during monsoon they hide under benches. Most of the time people kick them off the bench. Therefore, I have asked these youths to keep their shelter in the garden for these dogs. We have plans to keep five of such shelters in different areas in the gardens in future.”