‘Largest beach clean-up drive’ celebrates a year

MUMBAI: Versova residents marked their first anniversary of weekend beach clean-ups on Sunday by collecting 1.12 lakh kg of plastic waste with support from the head

MUMBAI: Versova residents marked their first anniversary of weekend beach clean-ups on Sunday by collecting 1.12 lakh kg of plastic waste with support from the head of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Erik Solheim, who labelled the event as the “largest beach clean-up in history”.

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Thousands of children, students, college-goers and officials from various private companies gathered at Versova beach and cleared trash from a kilometre-long stretch (from the jetty area up to Jeet Nagar, Versova village). The drive also saw 30 civic body workers, 50 cops and a few celebrities.

Over 52 weeks, the Versova residents’ volunteers (VRV) collected a total of 3.11 million kg (over 31 lakh kg) of plastic, glass and other beach trash, which is nearly one-third of the daily garbage generated in Mumbai. Solheim told HT that he was pleased to see the huge turnout during the drive. “On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, it is encouraging for me to be part of the largest beach clean-up movement in history,” he said adding that it was worrisome to see that the beach received fresh piles of plastic every day. “The government needs to regulate the use of plastic and there is an immediate need to give value to it by collecting and recycling it before it gets buried in the sand.”

Solheim added that the drive was a strong message to political leaders to act now against global beach pollution. “Apart from just collecting garbage from shoreline, collection needs to happen at source. The government needs to educate people and provide techniques for recycling. To help people, living in areas with high beach pollution, collect plastic, recycle it and sell it,” he said.

On Sunday, the clean-up area was divided into four zones. Each zone had one excavator machine and by the end of the drive, 28 tractors carried 4,000 kg garbage each to the city’s dumping grounds.VRV members said they were overwhelmed by the response. “Around 1,300 people signed up online for the drive. If the same can be replicated at every beach, citizens will be able to resolve the beach pollution crisis our city is facing,” said Afroz Shah, founder, VRV.

At a similar drive at Juhu beach on Sunday morning close to a lakh kg of garbage was collected.