Mumbai: On World Clean Up Day, celebrated on Saturday, Mumbai environmentalists, who have been cleaning Beaches and mangroves regularly, urged citizens to look beyond just picking up Trash on the beaches and pay attention to the root cause of this garbage piling up everyday, which seems to have no end.

Afroz Shah, an environmentalist and his team have been cleaning the Versova Beach since almost seven years every week. Thousands of volunteers gather to pick up trash and also educate people regarding the proper segregation of garbage, avoiding the use of plastic, develop better public etiquettes and more.

Speaking to FPJ, Shah said, "Beach cleanup doesn’t mean just clean beaches. When the volunteers and people who come over to participate in the cleaning exercise they are also made to realise that the trash that ends up on beaches and in the ocean are manufactured and handled by us. It's like practical groundwork and a kind of self realization to handle our wastes in a better way. So we must move beyond picking up trash, and make practical changes in our day to day life by reducing the use of plastic and becoming more environment friendly."

According to Shah, this World Clean Up Day, they gathered around 2000 volunteers for the Versova beach clean up and collected around 48,000 kgs of marine debris. "We also took the boats to clean the floating wastes on the surface of water,” Shah added.

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Another environmentalist from Navi Mumbai, Dharmesh Barai, founder of Environment Life Foundation who started cleaning mangroves with just two of his friends from Nerul to Belapur has now gathered hundreds of volunteers over a span of two years and has been cleaning mangroves every Sunday since August 2020, without missing a single week.

"The trash that we clean every week keeps piling up again and again and this is a never-ending process. The only way this collection of garbage around mangroves and into the sea can be reduced is by setting up 'trash traps'. These trash traps are setup in canals and drainage system where garbage gets collected in one place instead of going into the ocean. This garbage can then be lifted from a single spot instead of having entire beach clean ups. The BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) can also implement this method on a trial basis to understand its effectiveness which can help in using the method on a large scale," he said

Adding further, Barai said, "On Clean Up Day we had volunteers right from children to senior citizens who participated enthusiastically. The waste that we have collected today shall be used to make 'wealth from waste' products,” he added.

These NGOs have been working tirelessly since weeks without a break to make sure the beaches and mangroves of the city are cleaned and spread the awareness among citizens to wake up and act on the issue of environment before it's too late. These NGOs have also committed to continue this noble work even in the days to come so that they can play their part in doing something for the environment.