Chennai: Chennaiites are expected to converge at Marina Beach on Saturday morning and be part of International Coastal Clean-Up initiative that has been gathering greater number of participants collecting larger tonnage of beach waste every year.
“We had 7,800 dedicated volunteers walking down 280 km of beach with its human habitation in Tamil Nadu and they collected 38.7 tonnes of garbage for disposal. We are expecting 10,000 volunteers to turn up this year,” said retired admiral K.R. Srinivasan, vice president of the Chennai chapter of the Indian Maritime Foundation.
The southern coastline consists of 350 km of human inhabited beaches. International Coastal Clean-up is a worldwide event held on the third Saturday of September every year by the Ocean Conservancy, US, to save beaches from human marauding. The Indian Maritime Foundation is the national coordinator for this activity in India.
“We follow all the guidelines and rules of the ocean conservancy, such as safety kits like gloves and masks for volunteers, and responsible publicity material. They have a merit system all over the world based on three factors — number of volunteers participating, distance covered and the amount of garbage collected.
“We came 11th in the world last year, graduating from the 27th position in 2009. Most of this achievement is due to volunteers from South India, who are about 90 percent of the Indian volunteers. We hope to get to the 4th or 5th position in the next few years but a lot more volunteers are needed for it,” says the retired admiral, adding that our culture somehow does not help as we seem to feel that we must coexist with garbage.
“We follow all the guidelines and rules of the Ocean Conservancy, such as safety kits like gloves and masks for volunteers, and responsible publicity material. They have a merit system all over the world based on three factors – number of volunteers participating, distance covered and the amount of garbage collected,” said Admiral Srinivasan. “We came 11th in the world last year, graduating from the 27th position in 2009.
“Most of this achievement is due to volunteers from South India, who are about 90 per cent of the Indian volunteers. We hope to get to the 4th or 5th position in the next few years but a lot more volunteers are needed for it,” he said. To illustrate his point, he points out that even much smaller countries get much larger volunteer participation: for instance, the Philippines in 2015 had 2,50,904 volunteers (OC, USA figs.)
“Now we are sending all the collected garbage to the dumpyards, which is of no use. Our aim is to convert waste into wealth, such as organic manure and biogas,” said Admiral Srinivasan. He said the organization is working with some universities to devise technologies for this conversion.
“The local panchayats are keen on this but they have no funds to put up such units. Corporate entities should come forward to undertake this vitally important eco-cleansing task as part of their CSR activities,” he said.
