Mumbaikars often visit the lush green areas right outside the city for quick weekend getaways. These places are covered with tall mountains, waterfalls, serene nature and now, GARBAGE! All thanks to the visitors that go there to unwind and litter and leave packets of plastic behind.
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Dharmesh Barai and his team who is very enthusiastic towards preserving the beauty of nature collected almost 10,000 kgs of garbage from the waterfall areas. This amount of garbage was only collected from 16 waterfall places around Mumbai. On Independence day the team cleaned up these tourist spaces and mostly found plastic bottles plastic wrappers, glass bottles, packaged food and broken glasses.
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The team has urged the residents of Mumbai to not litter at these beautiful spots and be responsible enough to carry their bottle back with them. How difficult it would be to carry our trash back with us instead of throwing it near the waterfall? The team worked for hours together to make these tourist spots free from plastic and garbage. People from the age group 8 to 64 volunteered to clean these spaces. They have been working since October 2, 2016, towards this cause and their motto is – ‘My Waste, My Responsibility.
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As per Times Of India reports, Dilip Khandkar, a 64-year-old resident of Mumbai said, “It took us over two-three hours to pick up the scrap. People treat waterfalls like picnic spots and enjoy but don’t clean up afterwards. Since many waterfalls are not designated picnic spots there aren’t garbage bins and the villages nearby do not even have ghanta gadis to pick up the garbage. The Nagar Sevaks at the remote areas say that there are limited funds they have do not help them to arrange for garbage collection from there.”
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The alarming issue of non-biodegradable waste has to be taken into consideration and immediate action should be taken. Every year at Marine Drive the sea throws back all the garbage back to the streets and it is tonnes and tonnes of plastic waste. To deal with the issue at hand, the residents must stop first using plastic and secondly make sure to dispose of the garbage in the bins. It is about time we start addressing the increasing plastic waste on our planet.