Keeping up the momentum of the anti-plastic campaign, thirteen students from the Bharathiar University-Arts and Science College, two enthusiastic school kids and four Shola Trust members started on a cleanup of the Visitor Centre at Theppakadu in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) this Sunday. During the height of the tourist season, over a THOUSAND visitors pass through the Tiger Reserve and unfortunately, we were not surprised at the amount of plastic lying around.
We began with a presentation on the importance of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR) as an ecololgical hotspot. The students listed out quite a few species that are endemic to our home! Since some of the students are seriously considering a career in the civil or forest services with the Government, we spent a little while learning about the structure of the Forest Department bureaucracy of the MTR. After lunch at the Log House, we put on our gloves, got our sacks ready and began to pick up plastic from around the elephant camp. We met Semmozhiyaan, the baby elephant who lives at the elephant camp. He’s fed 20 litres of milk everyday and we ended up collecting a whole lot of lactogen foil packs, which are terribly difficult to recycle or reuse!
After an hour of picking up plastic and bottles at the elephant camp, we moved down to the roads. The road side was filled with all sorts to plastics ranging from disposable plastic water bottles and cigarette cases to candy and sweet wrappers. Once on the road, people began to notice we were up to something. The surgical gloves we were wearing to keep our hands clean helped in gaining attention of the tourists. By then, we had collected eight huge bags of plastic. With our sacks filling up in no time, we decided to have a tea-break and do some visitor interaction around the ticket counter.
The Reception of the MTR has an information center and museum. Visitors can also take a safari ride into the forest from this central point, so we decided to display the day’s gains here, where everyone could see them! We spoke to visitors, highlighting the problem of plastic and litter. As each van set out on the safari, we spoke to the tourist in Tamil, Malayalam and English, asking them to dispose their plastic waste carefully. The students talked about the “3 Rs” – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We learnt that there are two more R’s as well – Refuse and Recover!! As if to demonstrate our point of how animals can eat plastic looking for salt, a Bonnet Macaque was scavenging into a dust bin, picking on banana peels and plastic bags. He even ate a whole carton of Amul butter! This was exactly why we wanted the tourists to avoid plastics in an ecologically sensitive area like Mudumalai. Animals tend to ingest plastics unintentionally. This waste gets struck in the intestine and leads to the death of the animal. There have been cases of many such deaths in this area.
Most of the tourists were receptive and recognized that plastics are a big problem. We hope to have more anti-plastic campaigns, so that the Forest Department takes it to serious levels, and strictly impose rules and fines. As students and volunteers, we will continue to do our part of creating awareness. After a long day, we were treated with a jungle safari ride and we found ourselves quite lucky! We spotted a wild leopard on the side of the road! We also saw lots of spotted deer and a few sambar in the fading light. After dinner at the Log House, we headed off home, along with our bags of plastic waste! We dropped the plastic off at the Vidyodaya School plastic collection point in Gudalur, happy that we had cleared so much out of the forests. Perhaps next time, we’ll be even luckier and have LESS plastic to bring back!
Photo Credits: Shakthi Sritharan
Learn MoreAn important yet unrecognised wildlife corridor exists between Mudumalai and Mukurthi (see the article in Sanctuary Asia for more on this). Yet locally no one (including the forest department) knows anything about this or attaches any conservation importance to the region. In the middle of this corridor is a rather spectacular ‘view point’ that is a huge tourist attraction. While people all enjoy the panoramic views, they know nothing of the larger significance of the region and how it fits into the wider landscape.
This is particularly relevant in terms of the huge amount of plastics that tourists leave there. And on the heels of the successful plastics meeting (held on the 18th) we decided to start with a litter picking session on the 22nd of January, 2011. Vidyodaya was of course first on our list, and we quickly got together a group of kids, including the alumni of the school.
We had about 15 volunteers, and the simple task of cleaning up the area. But the amount of plastics turned out to be quite a challenge! We soon had enough to fill up one jeep, and so had to leave the rest for another day. This inspite of deciding to carry back only the plastics. All the paper based litter were piled up and burned right there.
We had two major challenges:
All the older kids (especially the boys) were mortally afraid of their schoolmates and friends or peers coming to View Point and seeing them picking up plastic! Peer pressure was quite high, and they didn’t want to be seen as crazies picking up other people’s trash. They were all trying very hard to fit into the mainstream school and be cool like everyone else. And so doing uncool things like picking plastics was a definite no no.
We talked about the possibility of calling the local media – the Gudalur TV channel and local newspapers – to cover the issue, but the boys didn’t want local media to carry news of them litter picking.
This is quite a serious issue – that doing something useful is not ‘cool’. We’re looking into how to change this. Gudalur is a small town, and with some effort we think it should be possible to reverse this and make it cool for school kids to be activists.
The other issue was the younger kids (especially the girls!) were quite finicky and didn’t want to touch the plastics or get their hands dirty. They each used little sticks to dig at the plastics, and progress was painfully slow. Gloves seem like quite a simple solution that is standard practice in the developed world. But introducing that here has some complications. First that it is not available in Gudalur, and will need to be bought from one of the cities, and we’ll be introducing something new into the area, which is always warrants extra thought. Second is that we will change the definition of ‘dirt’. The plastics in question are largely biscuit wrappers, disposable plates and glasses and plastic bags, most of which have been lying around for a while and are mud covered. The boys only wanted an assurance of water and soap after they finish to clean the mud of their hands. They didn’t think mud on its own was dirty, only something that needed to be washed off before eating. Any ideas on what we could do about this?
It went quite well on the whole. In keeping with our idea that all activities with children should involve some amount of fun, after an hour and a half of picking plastics, we then did regular tourist things.
Walked around the area and enjoyed the views, with bits of interesting discussion (like what ‘Section 17’ land was all about, and whether the huge corporate tea estates would return to forest cover!).
We ended with lunch (parotas and egg curry!) after which everyone headed back to their homes.
We hope to pressurise the forest department and local government into being more proactive on the issue of litter in this area, and to educate visitor’s about its importance.
Learn MoreOn the 18th of January 2011, the Gudalur Rotary club along with The Shola Trust, the Thotamoola club, the Rotaract Club and Vidyodaya school organised a plastics meeting.
(Dr. Venkatesh and Mr. Herman, from the Rotary Club of Gudalur)
First a little background:
The Nilgiris is an extremely important region from an ecological point of view, and we’re not going to go over it again! It has 66% forest cover, acts as a watershed for a large area in south India, and has very important and endemic biodiversity. And plastics are a major issue, since there is no recycling facility at all, or even effective waste management. The problem is compounded by the fact that the region gets about 800,000 visitors every year!
The issue of plastics in the Nilgiris goes back a long way. Under the leadership of Supriya Sahu as District Collector, the region was declared ‘plastic free’ in 2002 (see article in The Hindu). The ban was on all plastics less than 5 micron thick (essentially carry bags), and also disposable plates and glasses. It was quite effective when it was first enforced, as it tackled the supply side more than the demand. Any shops that gave out plastic bags were heavily fined. It did wonders for the district, but then over a few years, things slipped back, and subsequent Collectors did not act on it. Plastic bags are now freely available everywhere.
And the problem is not just bags. Absolutely everything comes packed in two or more layers of plastic these days, and there is a huge need to also deal with the demand side, and educate the public to shy away from plastic wrapped consumerism. Accordingly the district has seen hundred’s if not thousands of anti-plastic ‘marches’, ‘protests’, ‘awareness campaigns’ and the like, but none of it has resulted in any significant change people’s consumption of plastics.
So after all these years of fighting and shouting about it, the Gudalur Rotary club, primarily due to the efforts of Dr. Nandakumar Menon and Dr. Venkatesh, have come up with what looks like a more long lasting and sustained effort. It’s all about “Reduce, Recycle and Reuse”. Pressure on the Government to enforce the ban, combined with an innovative way of reduce and recycle. Kids from the Vidyodaya school are now self proclaimed plastic pickers for all of the Accord road. They have gone to each house along the road, and asked them to all wash their plastics and store it. They all go around on the first Saturday of the month, and collect the plastic from each of the houses and store it in their school. Once it piles up to a large enough amount (40 kgs or so), the Rotary club comes with a vehicle and transports it to a local recycler.
(Dr. Nandakumar and some of the members of the Thotamoola club behind him)
The next step is to roll this out to other parts and on to the meeting we just had:
The meeting itself was not he usual boring speeches by ‘experts’ at all! We screeneda short youtube movie on plastics, and then all the different groups at the meeting talked about what they thought could be done and what they were doing about the problem.
Given that plastic campaigns have been done to death, we at The Shola Trust were a bit sceptical about what would come of the meeting. But we were pleasantly surprised! The Rotaract members were still all excited, passionate and enthusiastic to do something about it. The members of the Thotamoola club also had some ideas which they were keen on implementing. And the kids of Vidyodaya were the most inspiring; though they were all tribals, and use very little plastic in their daily lives, they were really keen on their little project, and had no qualms going from house to house knocking on the doors and asking for plastics! All the older kids from other schools were a bit embarrassed about it because of the social stigma around rag pickers and sweepers, but these kids had no problems at all.
Vidyodaya is going to continue with this for the next year or so and make sure it is a smooth running operation before the Rotary club moves it on to other schools. The Thotamoola club is keen on installing bins for plastics at some key locations, and maintaining them to make sure people all use them and the plastics are all moved on to the recycler.
We at The Shola Trust are also interested in another plastic problem. The region gets a huge number of tourists, and all of them use and throw plastics all over the place. We want to deal with this issue, especially in sensitive areas like Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, View point on the way to Ooty (which is also part of the Mudumalai-Mukurthy corridor). And the Rotaract club is stepping up with a small army of volunteers (some 100s of students from the Bharathiar College!) to deal with the issue.
A promising start, lets see how it turns out!
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