KOCHI:A change is happening at all levels in the present day society, be it social or developmental. And as part of these changes, Thiruvananthapuram city has been witnessing a number of green initiatives. Sutheesh K Nair, a city resident, started the noble activity of planting trees on medians and land filled with waste. What he started as a hobby has grown into a big initiative. This has contributed to making the city a greener place to live in.
Sutheesh has been carrying out these activities for more than four years now along with his business. “I have been planting flowering plants for quite some time now. The first time I started planting was in 2015 in Karamana. The place was filled with wild grass and waste. So, I cleaned the area and planted a few saplings. Later other people also came forward and joined me,” he says.
Sutheesh made it a regular hobby to plant trees. He then started a group called ‘Global Green Initiative’ which now has about 88,000 members. The initiatives undertaken by the group include planting trees, clearing garbage and converting the sites into beautiful gardens and growing plants on highway dividers.
The group also regularly visits the areas where they have planted saplings and waters the plants.
The group first planted flowering plants in the two stretches in Karamana and also the stretch in Neeramankara. They have also planted almost 30 plants in Neeramankara stretch as well as on the new median in front of Honda in Neeramankara.
As part of the World Environment Day, they planted 500 tree saplings at Thirunelveli. They had a crowdfunding programme mainly for cleaning the stretch. They even hired the workers who clean the area to help along with their volunteers.
The group the plants regularly and they are pruned at intervals so that it doesn’t obstruct the vision of the riders. They follow a work schedule from 6.30 am to 2 pm. With the motto of ‘Start Planting’, Sutheesh is setting a good example to show how a common man can change the city. As part of this initiative, they gave awareness classes to students of Vivekananda Memorial school. Sutheesh says, “The air pollution in Thiruvananthapuram is not as high when compared to other cities like Kochi. So people should plant more and more trees to contain the pollution.”
Besides planting trees, Sutheesh is also coming up with the ‘Plastic Initiative’ where they will make an effort to contain the use of plastics and people will be given awareness to avoid the excessive use of plastics.