THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: If you are wondering how you can contribute to making the world plastic-free, take a cue from these tender coconut vendors in Kovalam. Apart from completely shunning plastic straws, they have replaced them with alternatives like recycled paper straws.
Steering them into this change is Krishna KS, waste management and community outreach officer at Positive Change for Marine Life, an NGO founded by Karl Goodsell based in Australia. Krishna’s recent campaign ‘Leave No Trace’ encourages street vendors with vending zones at tourist destinations to replace single-use plastics with other environment-friendly alternatives.
Krishna says, “Over the past three years, we have been carrying out various activities in the coastal areas to combat waste disposal problems. One such initiative, a community-centric waste collection campaign, was implemented in two wards of Vizhinjam with over 150 families. Plastic collection bags were given to each of the families so that the trash doesn’t end up in water bodies. The Leave No Trace campaign was conceptualised based on our recent survey across popular beaches in the district, where we identified the amount of plastic waste piling up,” she said.
According to Krishna, during the beach survey, around 12,959 pieces of plastic were collected from the beaches in Kovalam in just 42 weeks. “On assessing the materials collected from the beach, we noticed that plastic straws, thermocol plates, plastic covers and spoons were the major pollutants,” he said.
Krishna’s team thought the first step is to sensitise tender coconut vendors against the use of single-use plastic straws since they have the most use for it. Presently, around 18 vendors from Kovalam and nine from Vizhinjam are a part of the programme. “Four vendors from Kovalam have started to replace plastic straws with paper ones. Initially, the total number of plastic straws used by these four vendors was 9,660 monthly. The programme helped eliminate around 4,800 straws in just one and a half months,” said Krishna.
Jithin TV, a coconut vendor in Kovalam says, “I have been selling tender coconuts for around 10 years now. Volunteers of PCML helped us switch to paper straws and we have been getting plenty of positive feedback from customers.” But, the lack of cheap alternatives is still a pressing issue. While one plastic straw costs them 10-15 paisa, a paper straw would cost anywhere between 60 paise to one rupee. To help with this, we are giving them a subsidy for paper straws for three months. After this, they will be asked to charge one rupee extra from each customer to help balance the cost. We aim to encourage at least 50 vendors to take up eco-friendly alternatives,” shares Krishna.