50K volunteers keep Girgaon Chowpatty clean

MUMBAI: Shubh Mehta and Akshat Shah have kept their date with Girgaon Chowpatty every Sunday for the last five years. Inspired by global conversation around climate change and clean eco-system, Mehta and Shah founded a volunteer-run initiative Change Is Us in 2019. At the time they were Class 12 students preparing to take the JEE exams. “Till now, we have collected over 52,000 kg waste through over 204 beach clean-ups; there hasn’t been a single day when we did not find garbage to haul,” said Mehta, who is an insurance broker at an MNC.

As both Mehta and Shah live in the neighbourhood, football matches and family outings on the beach were mainstays – at the time the waste lying about went unnoticed, in the midst of adolescent frolic.

Although the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had designated personnel to clean the city’s beaches, Mehta said as the waste mainly lay in the “wet” area of the beach where the high tide recedes and leaves behind sludge. “No machines work there, so we have to work manually in the wet sand and remove the waste, where the BMC contractor does not work (they work in the dry areas),” he said.

Soon after the initiative the duo realised that their efforts were acting as a band-aid to fix a deeper wound. It wasn’t enough to clean the waste in the morning as the sea would throw up more by the evening. They realised the need for manpower. “We mobilised people to make an effort for the environment, and in these five years have built a pool of 50,000 volunteers who take turns to clean the beach for two hours every Sunday,” said Shah.

As it is a popular tourist spot for Mumbaikars, the BMC has employed contractual labour to keep Girgaon Chowpatty clean since nearly 20 years. The latest contract was given to Rakshit Infrastructure Project Private Limited in 2021 for a period of six years on a budget of ₹8 crore.

An official from the company said between 2 to 3 metric ton (MT) of waste is collected every day in the dry season. It increases to 7 to 9 MT on an average in the monsoon. “Occasionally, it jumps to 20 MT,” said the official.

The company employs between 16 to 20 workers in shifts to clean the beach during low tide. The number doubles in the wet season, keeping in mind the volume of work. Beach cleaning machine with a tractor, also called a ‘comber machine’, is deployed to scoop up 3 MT waste load, apart from a skid steer loader, which helps in loading, carrying and cleaning.

The official added, over the years the quantum of waste collected has increased exponentially, way above the expected waste (1.1 MT) underlined in the tender for dry days. On wet days it goes up to 3 MT and more.

Mehta agreed and added “the amount collected on a week-by-week basis depends on the number of volunteers”.

The kind of waste collected is also a surprise. “We collected two dumpers worth of slippers yesterday,” said the official from Rakshit. “We’ve also been noticing a lot of wood waste: planks, logs, discarded pieces, etc. However, what has reduced substantially are thermocol and plastic bags, especially after the ban.”

Anushka Doctor, who volunteers as project manager for Change Is Us, reported finding clothes strewn on the beach, particularly near the shoreline. “We find proper clothes, like shirts, trousers, sarees, and a lot of jute sacks and gunny bags. We also find a lot of collapsed barricades. Months after Ganeshotsav, we will still find idols and their garlands,” said Doctor. “Apart from this plastic waste is seen littered around – packets of chips, milk etc.”

“There was a lot of waste to deal with when we started in 2019,” explained Mehta. “It increases during Ganeshotsav and monsoons. During COVID we saw a lot of biomedical waste, including masks, syringes, etc. Since then, the quantity of waste has only been increasing.”