Sunday, May 16, 2010

A little bit of green in a sea of RED

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The earth is bleeding – for humanity's sins. That is the message I take from the huge exercise conducted today morning.


Chennai Trekkers had organized a city-wide movement to clean up the beaches of Chennai. Over 1000 volunteers covering the entire beach spread of the city. An amazing endeavor and a worthy response from the citizens of Chennai!

My group were the ‘Warriors’ but I would rather prefer the name ‘Crazy Cleaners of Palavakkam’ – the beachfront allocated to our gang of 30+ folks was North Palavakkam. The area allocated was approximately one square kilometer with Ranjith at the helm of affairs. The day started off with us forming a straight line (PT class, anyone?) and the distribution of plastic bags, gloves and instructions.

Green for bio-degradable waste and Red for non-degradable nonsense. Hence the title of the blog. All we found was Red Red Red everywhere.

Folks who frequent these beaches have zero care of the damage being done by them. Education is secondary – basic civic sense is missing. How many plastic covers did we find in this one square kilometer? Thousands! Not an exaggeration here, plastic covers of all sizes, plastic spoons, wrappers, clips; it appeared as though this place, visited by many on a daily basis, has been in continuous use as a sanitary landfill.

As a researcher, we were told that until sometime ago (and some continue to do so, stealthily), folks used to scour the dustbins of target audience to study their consumption pattern. Some of them ought to visit our beaches. Broken brandy bottles, flung cigarette packets, plastic wrappers of chips/pickles and pan parag covers! Quite a story indeed!

The cleanup lasted close to two hours with an early morning start and included two short breaks. Backbreaking work in the middle of the May heat – but not a word of complaint from the committed crowd!

After clearing the beach, we attacked the adjacent road which also served as a walking path for nearby residents. Have they been walking with their eyes and more importantly, nostrils, closed? Apathy to the extreme and we needed a bunch of volunteers no way connected with this area to come in! Blame the government for all we can, ask ton loads of questions, give forth millions of unsolicited suggestions – but to actually do some work: “ Hmm Hmm – that’s not my job”, will be the answer!

A little bit of green in a sea of red. This refers to our ‘collection’ at the end of the exercise. So many Red bags, so few green; with plastic again being the main villain of the day – and no dustbin in sight for miles!

In my opinion, the purpose of this entire clean-up exercise is two-fold. One - to actually go and clean up our city and Two - to create an awareness and spread a message to the nearby residents and pollutants that they can contribute a mite or two towards the cause.

The cause of cleanliness and saving our planet. One plastic cover at a time!

2 comments:

  1. Excellent write up Pravin. Enjoyed it.

    Plastic... the by-product of the consumer society....

    ReplyDelete