THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As many as 125 volunteers on Wednesday took part in the special beach clean-up drive at the Vettucaud beach as part of the Swachhata Campaign 2024, an initiative by the Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) Thiruvananthapuram. The drive was held jointly with WWF India, Indus Cycling Embassy, Sisters Foundation and NCC Unit of All Saints’ College. Around 210 kg of waste was collected by the volunteers during the two-hour drive.
Renjan Mathew Varghese, state director of WWF-India, who addressed the gathering, underlined the need to protect the marine and coastal ecosystem, which provides a stable source of protein to several million people and offers a wide range of livelihoods to a large section.
“Human beings pollute the coastal and marine ecosystem whereby plastics and micro plastics enter even our food chain. Global studies clearly show that on an average an ATM Card equivalent of micro plastics enters our body just in the time span of a week,” he said, in a release issued in Thiruvananthapuram .
A large share of the collected waste included plastic wrappers (33.5 kg), followed by glass bottles (23 kg), paper waste (10.7 kg), clothes (10.5 kg), plastic carry bags (9.35 kg) and single-use plastics and styrofoam bowls (5.6 kg), diapers and masks (4.75 kg), toys (1.05) and other rejects (40.25 kg) , said a WWF-India release.