This drive was organised by the Forest Department of Karnataka and DFO of M M Hills Mr. Yedukondalu V...
The plastic clean drive by volunteers initiative was taken where the pilgrims had visited Maley Mahadeshwara Betta by walk through forests from various parts of South Karnataka during the festival of Shivaraatri....The drive was to clean the plastic menace that was created....
So we "The Strangers" who actually were going separately to the event made a group (All thanks to WhatsApp), arranged a vehicle in sharing basis....All planned to meet at Nayandahalli Metro Station at 11.30 PM....
Met all of them on time, introduced ourselves to each other n left Bengaluru for a good cause in a Tempo Traveller
Around 3.30 AM we reached a place called Cowdhalli where we were told by DFO that stay is arranged in Forest Dept. IB
We took rest for 2 hours n woke up early and assembled at the starting point of the drive Thaalabetta....We waited for some time for all to assemble and had a breakfast prepared by the forest dept. cook...
Started the drive with a group photo with all the volunteers, forest officials, guards and front-liners around 8.00 AM...
We picked n picked n picked waste plastics continuously along the forest route and sometimes we got confused should we pick or should we just dig everything up....That much was the amount of plastic wastes all over...all this was because..around 4 to 5 lakhs pilgrims went on foot in 3 days....Imagine the crowd and imagine the litter or garbage that might have been produced by this...mainly the litter was composed of water bottles, water packets and buttermilk packets, forget the chocolate wrappers...all of this was actually distributed to the pilgrims by the donors in the name of service...Service to Mankind is OK but it should not become a curse to the Environment...
Also people who walk from far places, leave their footwear here itself and climb the hill on barefoot...It's their belief, I won't question that but our beliefs should not affect the forests and nature...
This drive ended around 1.30PM followed by lunch at Santekane Nursery arranged by the Dept. itself
The Forest DFO ended the meet with de-briefing and asking for vital suggestions to reduce and stop this kind of plastic pollution in the future...the volunteers, officials and students exchanged their views and decided to have continuous co-ordination and collaboration in the upcoming activities specially to reduce and stop PLASTIC POLLUTION.
We are from a civilization which worshiped Nature and people co-existed with forests and wildlife...
We can't stop this pilgrimage as it is related to one's belief and faith... But we surely can adopt the Eco-friendly way to this by providing them safe water at specific intervals so that they can drink and also can refill their water bottles, enough no. of dustbins to throw away garbage, multiple checkpoints to control the crowd, continuous monitoring of littering by volunteers, collecting recyclable wastes by NGOs working in those industries...
After this, we had a Darshan of Elu Maley Maadappa at Mahadeshwara betta and left to Bengaluru around 5.30PM
On the way had small coffee-break at Tiffany's in Maddur along with the famous Maddur vada.
There are many ways to control and stop plastic pollution, but the important one is to educate people and also honest implementation of the planned initiatives...
Thanks for the Forest Department for providing us the opportunity to volunteer for a good cause...
Thanks to DFO and Range officers for arranging food and accommodation..
Thanks to frontline staff of Forest Department who accompanied us during volunteering and gave us insights of the problems of forests and wildlife...
Let's all together #BeatPlasticPollution
Let's start it from our homes and volunteer in good causes related to Environment and Nature...
Thank you:)