Members of the youth-group BoskyOrb have been engaged in a community clean-up drive of the Thota Bengre beach at Mangaluru, Karnataka for the last 80 days. Mostly comprised of college students who consider themselves ‘nature healers’, the group has been doing the clean-up after launching a ‘Broom My Beach’ campaign. They have cleared up nearly 20 tonnes (20,000 kilograms) of trash from the beach. Of the waste that has been cleared up, roughly 80% was footwear and thermocol waste, while some 5% was medical waste.
This initiative was launched in October 2020 by Shreyas Holla, a CA student and his friend Harsha Kotian, a lecturer, along with Manisha, Harsha’s sister. What began as a three-member campaign, soo drew around twenty people, mostly students in the 18-23 age group.
“We selected this beach as it is one of the toughest to clean. It’s a delta point—where the river and sea meet, and the breakwater stops a lot of waste from coming into the sea, and thus a lot of trash gets accumulated on the shoreline,” said Shreyas. “We gradually plan to clean the entire stretch from the sunset point in Bengre to the Tannir Bhavi,” he added.
Sanket Bengre, a swimmer and businessman, who launched cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training for fishermen and locals last year, also joined the ‘Broom My Beach’ campaign. He said that once the campaign was launched, there has not been a single day when the clean-up drive was halted.
The team cleans the beach everyday between 6.30 AM and 8.30 AM. “We were segregating the waste too, but since no one was interested in collecting thermocol for recycling, the waste is piled up in a corner, and then handed over to the Mangaluru City Corporation,’’ Sanket said. All biodegradable waste is segregated.
On January 17, the team will complete more than 90 days of work on the beach, and a programme is planned to mark the occasion.