Volunteers combat sea of trash, remove 7,000 kg from city shores

I remember littering beaches until a few years ago, said Devika, a Class 12 student of National Public School as she extracts a torn bit of plastic from a tangle of elephant creeper vines near Broken Bridge in Adyar. “I would throw plastic bottles and wrappers into the sea, but now that I have realised how it harms the environment, I dispose garbage properly and encourage others, including my parents, to do so,” she said with a smile.

At 7 am on Sunday, there were 800 volunteers spread across the Broken Bridge area, armed with sacks and rubber gloves, hunting for plastic and glass pieces. They had answered the call for a clean-up drive organised by city-based NGO Environmentalist Foundation of India (EFI) ahead of World Environment Day on June 5.

“It does not matter if the size of the plastic you find is small. Even micro-plastic particles can cause grave danger to the environment,” Vignesh Mahesh, a member of the EFI instructed the volunteers.

Following the instructions, 24-year-old Santhosh who handles back office operations for a bank, carried a long stick with a sharp end, jabbing plastic wrappers, thermocol pieces before putting them into his sack. “This is the third time that I have been part of a clean-up drive,” he said. “The activity is a lot of fun because we can involve our friends in it,” the resident of Velachery said, revealing an almost full sack of trash.

For three Class 11 students of Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan in KK Nagar, it was this fun-meets-eco-warrior factor which made them drag themselves off the bed early in the morning. “The reporting time was 6.50 am, but we reached here at 6.25 am,” said 16-year-old Rupalika as she held the sack. Her friend Dhanush said, “It’s our first time at a clean-up activity and we were extremely excited about it. Doing this is fun and it makes us feel good that we did something to protect the environment.” Their friend Omar, however, was a little disappointed that more of their friends could not join them. Meanwhile, for Porur flatmates Rajat and Vishal, the drive meant a way to meet new people and get to know the city a little better. The Barclays employees hail from Delhi and Ahmedabad and opted to become environment protectors as a part of their corporate social responsibility. “This is the first time that we have tried something like this. There is quite a bit of trash here and hopefully, we will be able to fill our bag within an hour,” said Rajat while tugging at a plastic rope embedded in wet sand.

While volunteers at the stretch of Besant Nagar beach were confident of cleaning up quickly as broken glass bottles, torn slippers, rags, empty tubes of toothpaste, combs and even the door of a freezer lay exposed on the shore, those at the marshy area near the Broken Bridge, needed to put in more time and effort.

Amid cries of “Is that a frog?” and “Watch your step there” 20-year-olds Esha and Aishwarya were on their haunches, looking for plastic materials hidden in the thicket of vines. “A lot of people opted to clean up the beach, but we saw bottles and plastic wrappers lying among the greens here so we decided to work on this area,” said Esha. This is also the first time that the T Nagar residents chose to become green warriors. “We don’t usually do anything to help the environment, but when we came across a post on social media for this clean-up drive, we decided to be a part of it,” said Aishwarya.

At the end of two hours, the volunteers managed to reduce the trash count in the area by 1,000 kg. The collected waste will be carried to the landfills by Chennai Corporation workers.

Barely 500 metres away, a sandy path connecting the shanties on Besant Nagar beach to the Broken Bridge was lined up with tonnes of garbage. The trash overflowed from the bins and sometimes lay in mounds attracting insects and dogs.

When asked why the area was not included in the cleanup, Vignesh from EPI said, “We did not want to cross paths with the fishermen communitythere as volunteers trying to collect trash could have picked on nets or other fishing equipment which could have led to an altercation.”

“Also, we wanted to concentrate on the Broken Bridge area. Besides being a tourist spot, it’s an ecologically sensitive zone. Turtles come here to lay eggs and hatchlings escape to the sea from here so it is important to keep the area pollution and plastic-free,” said Vignesh. He added that events like these helped spread awareness among people about the threat plastic poses to marine life. “We had 800 people involved in the activity who now understand the gravity of the situation and will, hopefully, spread the word to others as well,” said Vignesh.