Now, plastic makers join Versova beach clean-up

With India's largest clean-up drive, which locals conducted at Versova beach, helping in the removal of 5 million kg of garbage in the past 79 weeks, the All India Plastic Manufacturers Association (AIPMA) has now joined hands with the team to come up with permanent solutions for the plastic trash collected from the beach.

Versova-based lawyer Afroz Shah, who initiated the clean-up drive and was even bestowed with the 'Champions of the Earth' award by the United Nations Environment Project (UNEP), said that he had approached AIPMA in June 2016 after noticing how tonnes of plastic was landing on the beach during the clean-up drive.

“In fact, some AIPMA members, including Akhilesh Bhargav, the chairman of its Environment Committee, have been joining us at the beach since July 2016 to help clean it up. Recently, they also informed us that they will provide one tractor and some staff for the next one year, which will be of major help to us,” Shah said, adding that with the sea will churn out a heavy amount of garbage in the upcoming monsoon season, which means that the clean-up drive will only have to be intensified.

According to Shah, who founded Versova Resident Volunteers (VRV), AIPMA's tractor trolley will also have the mechanism to function as an excavator to remove plastic stuck deep in the sand. It will be used alongside Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) machinery even when the new beach-cleaning contract is in place.

Speaking to DNA, Bhargava said that providing a tractor was just to help in the immediate work being carried out of collecting garbage from the beach but AIPMA would not restrict itself to just this much. “As part of our moral obligation as plastic manufacturers, we have decided to look at providing a more meaningful as well as long term solution. In the next 10 days we also plan to transport the plastic waste to a facility in Pune where poly-fuel can be extracted from the waste and if it's successful we can also think of setting up such a facility nearby Versova beach,” he said.

In fact, Bhargava even added that apart from the fuel they are also exploring other aspects of plastic recycling that includes generating energy from plastic, using it for road construction. “We are even in contact with the international agency that has been making bricks of plastic used for construction, which is at a testing stage. We intend to work jointly with VRV and BMC to help take care of plastic trash generated,” he said.