Clean and Green/Wipro Plastic Pickup Drive

Clean and Green/Wipro Plastic Pickup Drive, Muthathi, 30 August 2008.
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The weather decided to co-operate thoroughly on Saturday, 30th August 2008, when Clean and Green and Wipro decided to join hands in the plastic cleanup drive at Muthathi, on the banks of the river Cauvery at the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary.

Preparations had been done with Sandhya, Preeti, and Vijay of Wipro liaising with Clean and Green, who also made the necessary arrangements with the Forest Department at Muthathi to make the Guest House area available to the volunteers to have their lunch, and with Jungle Lodges and Resorts to pick up the collected trash and take it to M/s KK Plastics, who use the plastic in making road-surface laying composite, in a process copyrighted by Madurai Kamaraj University. Many roads in Bangalore are already laid with this composite material.

It was great to see one of the founder-volunteers, Roopa, who had come all the way from her home in Whitefield just to flag us off! Roopa, we did miss you a lot, and hope we don't have to again!

Two buses containing 39 Wipro volunteers, with Preeti and Vijay, and 5 core Clean and Green volunteers: in alphabetical order,Anitha, Anush, Deepa,Rakesh and Sandeep-- along with S. Karthikeyan, Chief Naturalist, JLR, drove to Muthathi via Kanakapura. The buses were also carrying water, breakfast and lunch; the volunteers had their breakfast without having to stop!

While Sandeep, Anush and I went with Karthik to Bheemeshwari to arrange for the JLR pickup, and access to the Forest Guest House, the Wipro buses reached Muthathi picnic area, and with the briefing from Anitha and Rakesh on how to segregate the plastic while collecting it, and how to use the gloves, sacks, and rakes, they started the plastic pickup in earnest.

All the rain and coolness of the past week was a distant memory as the hot sun beat down on the volunteers, who quite literally "sweated it out"! Pausing to rehydrate themselves with drinks of water frequently, they fanned out and collected PET bottles, composites, plastic cups and glasses, and so on.

There were a few funny moments, especially when some of us had to dig out the plastic from the soil where it had got buried because of the rains. "Plastic seems to be growing here!" remarked one young woman; when two young men dug out a really long piece of plastic, we were joking about its being a "Draupadi" plastic!

Usually, the Forest Department officials are also with us, but this time Mr Kempe Gowda could not make it.

It was lovely to see a colourful folk musician who serenaded us with songs about all the local deities from Muthathi, Kaveri and Biligiri Ranganna hills! Some of the local visitors were also curious about us and we took the opportunity of being "educators"...talking to them about the plastic waste and how they should try and use plastic a little less indiscriminately.

In almost no time, we had collected 18 sackfuls of plastic, that Sandeep and a few others stuffed into the sacks, sewed up them (with further jokes about "surgery") and weighed, while the others had a good wash. The total was 197 kg of plastic....a great total indeed, and this time, the C and G core volunteers did feel that the amount of plastic has lessened over the past few months.

When the rest of us had also washed up, we walked down to the Forest Guest House to have a well-packed, and well-earned, lunch! Before lunch was served, Sandeep talked about Clean and Green and how the initiative had started and was being maintained. Many of the volunteers had valid questions, such as how there could be a better visual representation, and how villagers had to be educated to ensure that trash did not accumulate. I must say that this was one of the most interactive groups I have gone with!

A most welcome packed lunch was enjoyed, and then, with the weather clouding over and cooling a little, most of the volunteers opted to walk down the pretty forest path to Sangama (about 4.5 km or so); the rest...rested! Later, the buses took everyone back to Bangalore, and hopefully, we have left Muthathi both cleaner, and more aware of the need to sustain that....!

A very big Thank You! to Wipro for this support; we feel that it was an invaluable beginning of what we hope will be a fruitful co-operative relationship! We do hope that some of the Wipro volunteers will become Clean and Green volunteers, too. Certainly, we found everyone cheerful and happy after a morning of really hard work. Sandhya, and Wiproites.... we look forward to more trips together.

Some of the pictures which I took to document the trip have been uploaded to the Clean and Green Photobucket website at

http://s283.photobucket.com/albums/kk305/cleanandgreen_photos/

If Chenna could also upload some of the video clips that he took, that would be great, and if any of the other volunteers would like to email us with their accounts of the day, or photographs or videos, we would really welcome it!


Anyone who would like to volunteer with Clean and Green on a regular basis can subscribe to the Clean and Green Googlegroup by sending an email to

cleanandgreen-subscribe@googlegroups.com

along with their full names and mobile nos, and I can add them on.



Wishing everyone the very best for the festive season coming up (and long weekends!)

Cheers, Deepa Mohan.