7400 tonnes of trash removed from Mumbai beaches – The heroes of the environment

Anybody who has been to the beaches of Mumbai will know what I’m talking about. Trash strewn everywhere, garbage that smells so much you forget what the sea smells like. They’re in an abysmal state and with the population of Mumbai growing everyday and more trash coming in, it looked like an apocalypse coming.

However, a group of dedicated citizens made it their life’s goal to clean up the beaches of Mumbai and give them a second chance. On the eve of the International Coastal Cleanup day, this group of heroes was joined by 2400 people including the Indian coast guard and they cleaned up 2.40 lakh KG of trash in one single day! The International Coastal Cleanup Day marked the 100^th week of the cleanup and according to Afroz Shah, lawyer and beach cleanup hero the total trash removed amounted to 7.4 million kg.

Just to put this achievement into perspective, while this group works tirelessly to remove trash, every year we add 300 million tonnes of plastic and other waste into the environment, of which 13 million tons finds its way into our oceans. Unless we do something to stop the use of plastic and find more efficient ways of their disposal, the effort of environment heroes like Afroz Shah and the coast guard might not be enough.

Read more here and here.

[shortcode id=”24297″]

EcoRight

all author posts