On World Environment day, Mumbai's nature lovers and activists came out and organized various clean up drives across the city to spread awareness about environment protection and to inculcate a sense of responsibility among the citizens towards nature.
Some of the clean up drives organized this Sunday were:
1. Environment Life Foundation - This organization conducts Mangrove cleanup Drive every Sunday and in a bid towards Wetland Conservation on World Environment Day, they cleaned a lake in Nerul which was covered with water hyacinth (an invasive species) which can have deleterious effects on aquatic environment and ecosystem.
Environmentalist and Founder of Environment Life Foundation, Dharmesh Barai, said, “The clean up drive successfully removed around 3 trucks of water hyacinth with the help of more than 200 volunteers."
2. Afroz Shah: Mumbai-based lawyer and environmentalist, Afroz Shah has been leading volunteers in manually picking up rubbish from Mumbai's beaches and teaching sustainable waste practices to villagers and people living in slums along the coastline.
According to Shah, "On world Environment day, around 3000 citizens joined to clean the beach. Marine litter and plastic pollution is one of the biggest threats to the health of the ocean and the planets. Citizens, corporates and BMC came together to do what had to be done to protect the ocean.
Around 34,000 kg of plastic debris left the belly of the ocean on Sunday." In total Afroz and his volunteers have cleared around 70 million kgs of waste in the past 7 years.
3. RAWW : Another clean up drive was conducted at the Yeoor Hills today by the Rotaract Club of Thane Horizon in coordination with the Sanjay Gandhi national park and the Maharashtra Forest Department. The drive was conducted, managed and attended by 25 young team members of Natrawild, RAWW (Resqink Association for Wildlife Welfare) and several other NGOs, and NGOs.
Pawan Sharma, founder of RAWW said, “The drive was facilitated at one of the villages at Yeoor where all the volunteers gathered at 8 am for a short clean-up drive of one-hour keeping in mind the covid protocols and all the necessary precautions. A total of 25+ sacks full of liquor bottles, plastic wrappers, plastic waste and almost 20 dozens of plastic bottles, used condoms etc were collected in one hour."
4. Mumbai March - Conducted a plastic collection drive at Sanjay Gandhi national park from 7am to 9am which saw a participation of 150 people all the way from Virar to Grant road. School students from vidhya mandir school also participated in the clean up drive. One of the organizers of the clean up drive, Pankaj Trivedi, said, "It was a successful drive, and we must have more such activities for the protection of the environment. The staff of Sanjay Gandhi national park assisted the citizens and the BMC helped in disposing the garbage at the end of the drive."
RAWW |
Mumbai March | FPJ photo
Environment Life Foundation | FPJ photo
