On 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!