After receiving few mails of confirmation from Wipro Cares regarding the Cleaning of Plastic from Cauvery Bank river along with Clean & Green Team.
It was very excited to take part in this Awareness program.
No soon the day to start out journey to Muthathi came, it was Saturday morning ( a joli day especially for a software employee ) clock stroked 6 'o' clock in the morning where our two chota tempo vans started from Sarjapur one in RED and other in GREEN colors picked up some volunteers on the way and moved to Banergatta where it stopped opposite to Shoppers stop to add on more volunteers and Cleaning equipment. I remember Preeti & Vijay taking the attendance of volunteers presence over there.
Then we started moving towards Kanakpura road adding more and more volunteers ended in Forty-Four in number.
Moved towards the Kanakapura village and had a stop there where we got a chance to put in Idlies in to our empty stomach.
That was the first time got a chance to see out Wipro Cares chief Sandhya Ranjit she's very simple that I can tell frankly, she poured some instructions about our garbage collection and precautions to take care individually. I also remember some volunteer clicking the snaps at the entire team with Idles in our hands.
After having enough break fast we started our way to destination, as soon as we reached there Clean & Green team over there asked us to divide in to teams of each team having Four members and one Kannadigan compulsory so that to instruct the visitors about the plastic harms.
In no time every body got involved in collecting the Plastic garbage over there.
It's not possible to describe the eve in words I think.....
44 Wipro employees instead of holding Mouses and Keyboards it was replaced with different instruments like gloves and few holding the sacs to put in the Garbage collected and few involved in pulling out the plastic that got stuck-ed in-between the herbs and plants with the help of brooms and sticks.
Finally the release of the project was successful with 197 kg of Plastic in 18 bags.
Totally it was instructed to collect three types of plastics seperately:
1) Thin Plastic
2) Pet bottles
3) Wafers
It was told there that the collected garbage will be sent to KK Constructions where this plastic will be reused to put the roads.
It was suggested that disposing of plastic causes the release of toxic gases so reusing is the best way to avoid that.
Few of our volunteers spoke to localities and visitors to educate them the harm of plastic if not disposed in bins.
There we a got a chance to have a round up discussion how to avoid all this ...?
The solution was nothing but every individual should take the responsibility to mostly avoid the usage of plastic and if not reuse and the least case dispose it in the proper bins.
--Suvarna Lakshmi Thatha
Wipro Technologies
Bangalore
Monday 8 June 2009
Clean and Green/Wipro Plastic Pickup Drive
Clean and Green/Wipro Plastic Pickup Drive, Muthathi, 30 August 2008.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
Sports Day at Viveknagar school
Click the below link for the photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28173170@N06/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28173170@N06/
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