Clean Up Activity At IIT, Bombay

By 2025, the waste composition of Indian garbage will undergo the following changes: organic waste will go up from 40% to 60%, plastic will rise from 4% to 6%, metal will escalate from 1% to 4%, glass will increase from 2% to 3% and paper will climb from 5% to 15%!

This data was alrming enough to set in a sense of determination in the members of Earth5R do contribute their little bit to environment. Members of the Mumbai team of Earth5R viz., Saurabh Gupta, Bharati Marathe, Jahaan Gupta, Rohith Prakash, Anmol Hembrom and Rajan Bhagat initiated a clean-up drive near the lakeside of IIT Bombay’s campus on 15th August, 2015. Several IIT students signed up for the clean- up drive, including Monish, Deelip, Rohit, Prashant, Kedia, Akhil Sai, Akhil, and Juhith.

The objective of the clean-up drive was to create awareness of the garbage and litter that we let go off unnoticed in our immediate surroundings while undertaking proactive action. With this aim in mind, the highly enthusiastic team set out to extensively collect all plastic and non-biodegradable materials in the vicinity.

The team was surprised by the sheer amount of garbage present in a place they visited quite often! Several bags of garbage was collected over a stretch of 1 km around the lakeside and majority of the waste was that of glass bottles. The learning process during this clean-up drive was enormous. Garbage was collected and it was all disposed in an appropriate manner.

The Earth5R team and the students from IIT were extremely enthusiastic about conducting such activities in the future as well. During the course of the event, discussions on environment issues varied and were discussed with much enthusiasm.

-Reported by Rohit Prakash. Edited by Pragya Lodha