CSIR-NIO initiative to clean Goa’s coast on coastal clean up day

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Dona Paula: Coastal clean up drive by CSIR-NIO on International coastal clean up day, 2019

It’s inspiring to once again have witnessed the power of the people successfully working for a common cause. In this case, for International Coastal Cleanup Day 2019, which took place on September 21.

CSIR-NIO, in collaborateon with NCCR, MoES has conducted a clean up activity at Caranzalem beach, Panjim, Goa.

Coastal Cleanup Day has effectively “harnessed the power of the people to fight ocean trash” – with approximately 130 staff, scientist, students of CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography, participating Coastal Cleanup programme. Prof. Sunil Kumar Singh, Director, NIO has started the clean up day with a inspirational speech and a brief instruction of segregating trash in different color coded trash bag has been given by Dr. Mahua Saha , Senior scientist and Dr. Rakesh Sharma, the coordinator of the clean drive programme. Gregory Jacques, community Organizer of CCP, Goa was also present through out the clean drive for managing the trash with his team. Collectively, individuals have joined a movement to voice the importance of protecting our oceans and lands, and to take an action to correct our wasteful lifestyle. The misconception that this man-made material will harmlessly go away, our addiction to single-use plastic and the lack of plastic waste management has resulted in a global epidemic of plastic pollution.

The 20 trash items collected in this clean sea drive are PET bottle caps of various types, packaging plastics (maximum) includes chuna bottles, lays packet, milk packets and many kinds of food packaging, toothpaste, toothbrush, fishing nets (pieces), whole Tarpolin sheets, plastics spoons, straws, nylon fibers, plastic cups, glasses, pens and sketchpens, lots of fragmented pieces of plastics of different colours, small toys, decorative items made up of plastics, plastics disposable cup, plastics bags, foam etc.

The clean up was made around 1km long along the beach, out of which 1,078 kg of plastics, 486 kg of organic wastes including papers, and other organic trash, 720 glass bottles and 125 metal cans were recovered. All the trashes have been collected by CCP, municipall corporation, Panjim Goa by their vehicle.

The International Coastal Cleanup began more than 30 years ago and in that time our plastic consumption has increased. We now know that plastic has a negative impact and we know where it is coming from. We now need to clean up our pollution, and more importantly, we need to cut it off at the source.

Awareness is key. While we applaud the short-term benefits of a beach cleanup, for us, the bigger value they have is in bringing awareness to the topic, as we find that once people are informed, they will change and thus become part of the solution.

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