Chennai’s eco-warriors: Youngsters rid the streets of 500kg plastic waste in 50 days

Twenty-six-year-old city-based artist B Gowtham creates pieces of art with messages for the society. His art installations over the past few years included the likes of a majestic whale lying on the sands of Besant Nagar Beach, created out of thrown away plastic bottle caps, and another massive work of plastic bottles that urges to cut down water wastage — all pointing at the need to fight the plastic menace staring at us. But when art wasn’t moving people enough to act for a change, the young artist took it upon himself to walk each day to pick up discarded plastics from streets and hand them over to recyclers. Thus, his initiative ‘Walk for Plastic’ was born.

“All of my art works were addressing social issues like plastic pollution, food waste and water management. Even though they were received well by people, I felt that there was no continuity or follow-up on the impact they have had on the community. On June 1, I decided to walk every day and collect plastics I would find on the roads and give them to the recyclers. ‘Walk for Plastic’ began as my personal journey to make the surroundings greener,” recounts Gowtham.

As he walked each day, Gowtham began documenting his daily collection of plastics on social media. One would be astounded to know that a kilometre stretch on the arterial roads of the city had an average of 2kg discarded plastics, including water and cold drink bottles, wrappers and plastic bags. “Slowly people started taking note of what I was doing through social media and by the end of 25th day of the walk, I had more than 20 volunteers joining me in picking up the plastics. Through the walks, I found that people throwing away plastic bottles from moving cars is one of the biggest reasons for our roads being littered,” he adds.

During the 50th day of the initiative a few days ago, Gowtham was joined by a total of 120 volunteers not only in Chennai but also across the state, picking up plastics in their own towns and cities. Over the 50 days, along with the volunteers, Gowtham managed to collect over 500kg of plastics, which was handed over to recyclers. “There have also been a few volunteers from South Africa and Malaysia who decided to join the campaign from their countries. Plastic is omnipresent, so walking everyday was necessary to build a momentum for the mission,” shares the artist, who has walked a total of 200km over the past 50 days.

The money raised from handing over plastics to the recyclers is being saved to support the children of rag pickers. “Through the walks, we do not intend to steal the livelihoods of the rag pickers, but instead wish to support the education and employment of their children,” stresses Gowtham, who calls the rag pickers as ‘supermen’ of our society, taking up the crucial task of collecting plastics for recycling.

The initiative has also helped in clearing the misconception that recycling is a difficult process. “All one needs to do is walk or jog while wearing a pair of gloves and pick up all the plastics they find. We then give the collected plastics to old paper marts, who hand it over to the recyclers. I usually insist that volunteers walk in the same locality each day so that the local residents and shopkeepers are intrigued, and can possibly be interested in being part of the walks,” notes Gowtham, who wants to continue the walks for the betterment of our environment.

“I haven’t been able to create much art as the initiative requires me to engage people. But I hope to return to art soon. When I see thousands of marine and animal species getting killed by our plastics, it disturbs me. There’s no better time than now to act on it,” he remarks.