60 city gamers play, chat and clean up the Marina beach
CHENNAI : A long the coastline, a group of locals armed with gloves and white sacks walk through Marina Beach, picking up bits of garbage as they go. As they walk through a slum near Srinivasapuram, they begin to fiddle with their phone. This was the scene at the Zero Kuppai Mega Clean Up 2, a beach clean-up event held on Sunday as part of Niantic’s Earth Day Cleanup. This was the second World Earth Day event by Niantic, a mobile game developer.
Gamers all over the world were challenged to participate in community clean-up projects while playing Pokemon GO, an augmented reality mobile game based on capturing and training virtual creatures.
“What makes Pokemon GO different from other games is the community aspect of it. You have to go outside and meet people to play the game. We can use the power of this community feeling to bring in change,” explained Guru Aditthya, a local Pokemon GO player and participant.
The group of 60 participants collected 850 kg of garbage within two hours. The crowd was familiar with each other, discussing games or personal matters with each other.The participants said that after the introduction of Legendary Pokemon — rare creatures that are difficult to beat — and raids — teamwork-based objectives in the game — the community began organising themselves through social media to meet regularly. This led to the first clean-up being held in Thiruvanmiyur last year.
Vineeta Hoon, managing trustee of the Centre for Action Research on Environmental Science and Society, a coastal and marine conservation and research centre, organised both years’ events through the NGO. The 65-year-old is also a Pokemon GO fan and saw this as a perfect opportunity to bring together the community again.
“My nephew used to collect Pokemon cards, and I used to teach him about its evolution. So I read up about the Pokemon. When the app released in 2016, he downloaded it for me and I used it for exercise, initially,” said Vineeta, a level 40 Pokemon GO player. She said that Niantic had released a list of different rewards available based on the number of participants in the clean-up drives across the world, and that the group is hoping for the gold reward package, with some rare items in the game.
Working with the local citizen’s group, Zero Kuppai Movement, the participants walked through the slum and spoke to the residents on the need for proper disposal and segregation. Earlier that week, a few participants had distributed pamphlets on waste disposal to the slum locals.According to Ashok Rajendran, a volunteer, most of the waste collected was plastic packets, liquor bottles, used cloth, and slippers. “We are the guardians of the land. Any pollution that affects the land, affects us too.
This effort to take ownership of the land and keeping it clean is important. Now, they will start demanding more from people in power, such as more bins for the area,” he said, adding that these areas were severely lacking in bins, which is why many people disposed of waste in the canals and rivers, leading to ocean pollution. At the end of the event, the group gathered together, looking intently at their phones. Their efforts were rewarded with a Silph Road Badge – a cosmetic feature available in the game.