Mumbai After almost four years, lawyer and activist Afroz Shah had to roll up his sleeves and get into knee-deep muck to do what earned him the Champions of the Earth accolade from the United Nations (UN) in 2016.
Along with volunteers and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) workers, Afroz went back to Versova beach as the ocean threw up 9.5 metric tonnes of garbage for the first time since 2018 on Saturday.
From 10am to 7pm on Sunday, Shah along with 250 volunteers and 180 BMC workers, armed with five excavators including two excavators gifted by veteran superstar Amitabh Bachchan and six tractors cleaned 1km of the beach from Beach Classic building till Sagar Kutir.
“In buffalo tabelas in Jogeshwari, sawdust is used, which reaches the sea from the stormwater drains. The sawdust catches all the plastic. We started a massive clean-up drive in Versova again as this needs to be cleaned up,” Afroz Shah told Hindustan Times.
Arun G Pawar, junior overseer, K(west) ward said that a total of 90metric tonnes of garbage was removed. “We used seven compactors worth 6MT, JCB machines and nine tractors. BMC is in charge of 4.5km of the beach. It was difficult to remove plastic which was lodged into the sand, and we had to use the forked arms of the JCB to dislodge the plastic and not the sand,” said Pawar.
However, volunteers see the mounds of waste as an opportunity and not a wasted effort of their past work.
“Cleaning up a beach is scientific in nature. Beaches act as a net and disallow garbage from going into the deep sea. Hence, seeing garbage on the beach makes us realise that it is an opportunity for us to not allow the waste to go into the sea. If it goes into the deep sea, it will form a plastic island called ocean gyres. It then starts breaking down and forms microplastics because of the sun. This is more dangerous as microplastics enter into the digestive system of marine animals and disturb the aquatic ecosystem,” said Shah.
Jonty Pachampulli, a resident of Sagar Kutir in Versova and Shah’s volunteer, said, “It was like a cyclone-type throw up. The challenge isn’t as much as it was before because the number of volunteers is over 200 now.”
Pachampulli said that volunteers do the beach cleaning with love because they want their children to have their own childhood experiences on the beach.
“I have an eight-year-old son and a baby. I want them to enjoy clean water and clean sand. I used to show them old photographs. The future generation should enjoy this beach and we are changing the mindset and are asking people to use plastic less. We are taking baby steps to achieve a larger goal and protect marine life from consuming microplastics,” said Pachampulli.
Shah added that beach clean-up isn’t their only focus, but their endeavour is to make the surrounding houses zero garbage.
“We teach residents how to buy shampoos, detergents without packaging. This plastic in the ocean has come from somewhere else,” he added and said that even the food brought to the beach by volunteers without any packaging.
“It becomes a fun activity almost like a picnic where we work and eat together,” said Shah.