Against the backdrop of more than 700 species of marine organisms in danger of extinction and marine animals like turtles and fishes known to ingest or get entangled in plastic debris in the sea, India on Monday kicked off a week-long mass cleanliness drive to regain the beauty of its 50 beaches in coastal states/Union Territories like Gujarat, Daman & and Diu and Maharashtra.
Under the ‘Swachchh — Nirmal Tat Abhiyaan,’ the Government is hoping to clean up the beaches and create awareness among citizens about the importance of coastal ecosystems. The campaign from November 11-17 will in total cleanup 50 beaches in the ten States. These include Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. The beaches have been identified after consultations with the States/UTs, said a senior official from the Union Environment Ministry.
To ensure that the drive is taken up as a mass movement, school/college students who are part of eco-clubs, district administration, institutions, volunteers, local communities and other stakeholders have been involved.
The two-hour duration drive aims to cover a minimum of a one kilometre stretch of the identified beach daily. Sand cleaning machines will be deployed at about 15 beaches, the official added.
He said coastal debris includes plastic and other non-biodegradable synthetic materials discarded intentionally or unintentionally that enter the marine system. “This waste finds its way to the sea, does not undergo degradation and remains suspended in the water and often gets washed ashore as litter all along the coast. As high as 6.4 million tonnes of marine litter gets dumped into the seas annually,” he added.
It is predicted that soon there will be more plastic than the fish in sea. A study by National Centre of Coastal Research (NCCR) last year too pointed out that plastic litter from tourism alone accounted for 40 per cent-96 per cent of all beach litter.
It pointed out that at Chennai’s Elliot’s Beach, for instance, plastics like plastic bottles, cutlery and thermocol left by tourists accounted for 40 per cent of all the litter, while at Gopalpur in Odisha, it was as high as 96 per cent. As for the other four beaches, plastics formed 66 per cent of the overall litter on Fort Kochi Beach, 60 per cent at Karnataka’s Karwar beach, 87 per cent at Visakhapatnam’s RK Beach, and 81 per cent at Andaman Island’s Rangachang beach.
After tourism, fishing was the next biggest source of litter. MV Ramana Murthy, Director, NCCR, has called for a national marine litter policy to control and manage waste on land and prevent its entry into the marine environment.
“Other than the plastic litter dropped by tourists, similar waste from creeks and inlets made its way into the sea in the monsoon”, he said.
A 2016 study has found that all seven species of turtles are known to ingest or get entangled in plastic debris in the sea, while more than 700 species of marine organisms are in danger of extinction.
This is for first time that the Centre has taken up marine garbage cleaning in such a large scale. So far just private companies or individuals have been engaged in mission.
For instance, lawyer Afroz Shah from Mumbai is known to inspire more than 2,00,000 volunteers to join him in clean up of Versova Beach while PepsiCo India has joined hands with Project Mumbai, an NGO, to participate in “Jallosh-Clean Coasts”, biggest clean-up of nine Mumbai beaches and Mithi river.
